Trusted Reviews have looked at the Sony HDR-HC3E - HD Camcorder
The HDR-HC3E is considerably different in appearance to the HC1E.Sony HDR-HC3E - HD Camcorder Review
It's a lot more compact, and weighs 600g, which is 180g less. The image sensor at its core is different too. Although it's still a 1/3in CMOS rather
than the more usual CCD found in camcorders, the gross pixel count has dropped from the 2.97Mpixels in the HC1E to 2.1Mpixels. That's still more than enough for full-resolution HDV, which has a resolution of 1,440 x 1,080 so only requires about 1.56Mpixels. Despite the lower-resolution CMOS, Sony is actually claiming 4Mpixel stills quality, which clearly uses a hefty amount of interpolation. These stills are captured to MemoryStick Duo, although none is supplied in the box. But more on that later.