Sony Finally Intros an HD Point-and-Shoot

To date, we’ve been shocked– shocked– that Sony hasn’t released a point-and-shoot with 720p video recording. Particularly given that its cross-product marketing campaign is called HDNA, the lack of HD in its camera lineup has been baffling. Finally, Sony’s on board: the new Cybershot DSC-T500 does just that. I saw a demo a few weeks ago, and because it uses a more advanced codec (MPEG4 AVC/H.264) than its competitors– namely, Kodak and Panasonic– the picture has more accurate color and exposure (that’s saying a lot, since I’ve given a lot of love to Kodak’s 720p cameras). The 10.1-megapixel camera has 5X optical zoom, 3.5-inch touch screen, ISO up to 3200, HDMI output, Intelligent Scene Recognition, face detection, scrapbook playback, the ability to filter by face, and smile shutter settings. It will cost $399.