High-definition TV, or HDTV, is popping up in living rooms across the country. It's a new TV standard that offers a picture 10 times sharper than anything you've seen. High-definition camcorders use the same technology. The pictures are phenomenally rich. The sound is unbelievably crisp. It looks and sounds like a real production, but how?

At first glance a high-definition camcorder appears to be a typical camcorder. The recording format is still MiniDV tapes. They have features common to digital camcorders, including digital still capability, back light compensation, built-in digital effects and scene transitions. What separates high-definition camcorders from their counterparts is the extraordinary image quality.

Camcorder pictures are made up of a series of lines. The more lines, the clearer the picture. These lines are displayed on the screen incredibly fast in one of two ways. Lines can be progressive scan ('p'—placed in order one right above the other) or interlaced ('i'—placed in two sets, one set going every other line, then the other filling in). High-definition uses the progressive-scan format, which creates a better picture with at least 720 lines. By comparison, a normal TV has at most 480 using the interlaced method.

Another measure of picture clarity is pixels, which are the little dots that make up the picture. Just like with the lines, the more dots you have, the more detailed the picture. An average camcorder creates a picture of between 100,000 and 700,000 pixels. High-definition camcorders raise this number over the one million mark to make the image remarkably more intense.

Other special features also contribute to the picture quality. Camcorders may have a specially designed lens for high-definition filming with features such as superior color purity and low edge-to-edge distortion. High-definition camcorders and TVs use component connections that allow multiple video signals to transfer, keeping the same colors and brightness that were originally recorded.