Grass Valley's Flash-Based Broadcast Camcorder

File under freakin' sweet: SanDisk and Grass Valley have teamed up to create the Infinity Digital Media Camcorder, a professional SD/HD camcorder that skips both tape and hard drives and records straight to high-speed CompactFlash cards. The camcorder has two slots, and given the current maximum high-speed CompactFlash capacity, that's a total of 16 GB of storage space -- enough for a little over an hour's worth of standard-definition DV video, or over two hours of high-bitrate MPEG-2 (again, in SD). The camera also records 720p and 1080i.

With a wealth of connectors (3 x USB 2.0, FireWire, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet) and a price "under 20,000 Euros or US dollars," this is definitely a camera for the person who does this for a living, not the hobbyist. Consider this advance notice of things to come.