Digital Home Thoughts: Flip Releasing the Slide HD Soon

"All we have is this one image, care of a gracious anonymous tipster who said it was found at Best Buy. Our best guess? Well, it's a Flip camcorder, and there's a sliding element to it -- amazing deduction skills, we know."

What's that? A new Flip HD camera? Seems so - and if that yellow sticker is any indication, we'll see it launched in under two weeks. Oh Best Buy employees, can't you keep anything a secret? Spec wise, the Flip Slide HD has 16 GB of built-in memory, good for up to four hours of video. Unfortunately, it's still limited to 720p h.264 video at 30fps - I was hoping they'd be up to 1080p by now, or maybe 720p with an option for 60fps. The big change here (beyond the bump in storage capacity) is the much bigger screen - though based on the position of the lens, you still use it held vertically. Which means the bigger screen is for...playback and showing your videos to others? I can see that actually - I bet a lot of people keep their favourite video clips on their Flip and don't transfer them to their computers, so having a bigger screen means it's better for sharing.

I have a Flip Mino HD and like it quite a bit, but what I really want - what would make it a better product for me - is better low-light performance. That's something I'd pay more money for.