Following Panasonic and Sony’s unveiling of their new AVCHD standard comes the announcement that Panasonic is developing technology that will allow the AVCHD images to be recorded to SD memory cards. The same standards that apply to the 8cm DVDs will also apply to images recorded to SD.

AVCHD features 1080i, 720p, and 480i recording. Video is compressed to 18Mbps using the H.264 codec. Audio can be recorded at up to 7.1 channels using PCM compression or 5.1 channels using AC-3 compression.

All I can say is hallelujah! I was afraid that we’d be stuck with those stupid 8cm DVDs forever! Using SD cards you will be able to get a lot more time than 11 minutes (standard 1.4GB DVD). With 4GB SD cards already on the market and 8GB cards on the way, AVCHD just might have a chance to survive. I’m actually really looking forward to this now.