Is it the chop for mîcroMV?

The Guardian last week ran a story on how Sony was committed to the mîcroMV (the tiny digital tape) format for camcorders and that it wouldn’t follow Panasonic/Samsung’s lead into video devices that archived on to storage cards or hard disks.

To prove the point it announced the impending arrival of the DCR-IP1, which it is billing as the world’s smallest camcorder.

There are whispers in Japan though that the IP1 could be the last camcorder of its type. An article in at the Camcorder Info website speculates that with Sony feeling a financial squeeze it will cut unprofitable formats and that mîcroMV is likely to be the most high profile casualty.

The format has fared reasonably well in Europe but apparently not been much of as success elsewhere. The size of the camcorder may have caught consumer eyes but not its sub-DV video quality. Personally we’d be surpised to see it go without Sony at least hinting at a Memory Stick camcorder.

The IP1’s features include; Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens, 10x optical zoom, 120x Precision Digital Zoom, one mega pixel still images camera, a slot for Memory Stick DUO cards, webcam capabilities, Super SteadyShot and MPEGMOVIE AX, which allows you to record moving images directly to the Memory Stick Duo.

The IP1 should retails for around £1200 and goes on sale in the first week of November.