Camcorderinfo got their paws on the tightly-guarded new GZ-HD7 camcorder from JVC, and have posted a preliminary First Impressions Review. It sounds like a pretty unique package, particularly for a “consumer” camera. 3 CCD, Fujinon 10x optical zoom lens, zebra display, optional conversion lenses, and five recording hours of 1920×1080i HDV to the built-in 60GB hard drive. Pricing is expected to be around $1800.

“The HD7 uniquely employs VBR (variable bit rate) encoding at up to 30Mbps with an average speed of 26.6Mbps. This compression rate leapfrogs AVCHD MPEG-4/H.264 compression, which has a theoretical max data rate of 24Mbps, but is currently implemented at a max of 15Mbps on Sony’s HDR-SR1. With so little information about MPEG-2 Transport Stream technology available at the time of this review, we can only speculate on the implications of what this new 30Mbps compression will produce, and how its efficiency compares to AVCHD. The question of whether JVC’s new algorithm will match or exceed HDV video quality (also an MPEG-2 format) in an HDD-based camcorder is certainly on our minds.

In addition to its highest quality setting, the HD7 includes a SP mode that captures video at 1440 x 1080i resolution and a variable bit rate 22Mbps maximum and 19Mbps average, as well as a constant bit rate mode of 1440 x 1080i at 27Mbps. The Full HD high quality mode can store five hours worth of video to the 60GB HDD while the SP, Long Time Mode records about seven hours to the HDD.”

(Via CCI’s redesigned blog)