Sanyo officially announced the first HD pocket camcorder HD1 in Japan today. Sanyo already announced this world's smallest HD camcorder at the CES 2006. Amazon.com has the Sanyo VPC-HD1 already available for pre-order at $799.99. It will ship March 30th.

The Sanyo Xacti HD camcorder will be known in Japan as DMX-HD1. In the US it will be called VPC-HD1 - I hate those different model numbers for the same product. The 5.1MP HD1 can record HD video with 720 lines in MPEG-4 onto SD-Cards. The compact digital camcorder features a 10x zoom.

AkihabaraNews has been at the Sanyo press-conference today and published some video footage of the event as well as a sample video taken with the Sanyo Xacti HD1.
The Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 will sell in the US for $799.99 starting on March 30th.
Japanese consumers are supposed to be able to get their hands on one of these in February.
More details also in the Sanyo press-release (Japanese).