A little earlier today, we reported on the new SDHC standard invented by the “good” people over at Panasonic, a media card that looks nearly identical to the standard SD fare but is incompatible with any SD reader/writer. Well, at least we got something that will work with the new standard because Panasonic has just announced the SDR-S200 3CCD video camera.

In addition to the ability to record MPEG-2 video directly onto 4GB SDHC cards (naturally), the S200 packs in three 1/6-inch CCDs and can, in effect, take still pictures at a more than reasonable 3.1 megapixels. Because of this upgrade (among others), this camcorder is slightly larger and heavier than its predecessor the SDR-S100. What remains the same is the 10x optical zoom, optical image stabilization, and a 2.8-inch LCD to make sure you got everything in frame.

Stick to the low-res stuff and you’ll be able to get up to 3.5 hours of juice out of this puppy (ugh, that sounded kind of dirty), whereas if you blast up the quality and max out the res, you get right around the 50 minute mark worth of recording. Expect the S200 to drop in Japan next month for around $880.