Panasonic, the brand name of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial, and Sony have announced specifications for a new high-definition digital video camera recorder format jointly established by the two companies.

The AVCHD format allows for recording and playback of high-resolution, digital HD images using 8cm DVD media.

The two companies have started preparations to license and extensively promote the format throughout the industry.

Digital HD and terrestrial broadcasting are expanding widely in Japan which, coupled with the emerging growth of HD broadcasting across the world, shows that the penetration of HD-capable TVs is gaining unprecedented momentum, the companies said.

As a result, Panasonic and Sony will promote AVCHD throughout the industry as the new HD digital video camera recorder format best suited for the HD era.

AVCHD is an HD digital video camera format for recording 1080i and 720p signals onto 8cm DVD media by using highly a efficient codec technology.

The format employs an MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec for video compression, and Dolby Digital (AC-3) or Linear PCM for audio codec.

This makes it possible to develop HD video camera recorders which achieve compact size as well as high-quality video and audio.

Sony and Panasonic believe that the MPEG-4/H.264 codec is over two times more efficient than MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 codec technologies.