What is an AVCHD Player and which AVCHD player should I use

You are probably reading this page because you bought a brand new high definition video recorder (HD camcorder) and your memory has run out so you’ve decided to copy the video footage to your computer or to a DVD and that’s where you ran into some difficulty. What you need is a AVCHD player to play your video footage and to record it onto DVD or Blu-ray. Unfortunately there aren’t that many AVCHD players out there and most AVCHD players that are bundeled with HD camcorders are inadequite or should we say rubbish. If you’re simply looking for a free AVCHD player, look no further! (click on the free AVCHD player link in the previous sentence to go to a list of AVCHD players)

But let’s not jump the gun. What is AVCHD and why is my camcorder using it? Is AVCHD a format that only my camcorder uses and now I’m stuck with it?

I’ll start by setteling the nerves. DON’T worry. Whether you bought a Sony Handycam, Canon Vixia, Panasonic or any other brand chances are very good that it will be recording AVCHD video. AVCHD video recording format is a variant of the H.264 used in Blu-ray. It’s basically a video compression format, much what .jpg is for photos and it’s pretty standard although very new. Luckily, all the big players like Sony, Canon and Panasonic have opted for the AVCHD video format meaning we’ll see a lot of development for software like AVCHD players and AVCHD editors in the next few years. As we all know Blu-ray won the “Next Generation Player” battle against HD-DVD, AVCHD works on Blu-ray and is thus compatible with Blu-ray players like the Sony playstation 3 or PS3.

It’s good to know you’ve made the right choice of HD camcorder, but the question on your mind is still how on earth do you watch these on your HD television (HD tv) or on your computer. The HD camcorders are easiest to use if you plug them directly into an HDTV via HDMI. HDMI is a cable, much like a USB cable which comes with some HD camcorders like the Canon Vixia but not with all HD cameras like most Sony Handycam. Luckily HDMI cables are not expensive and can be bought from Amazon or any other online store.  All HD camcorders have HDMI output, so it’s easy to just connect that camcorder to your HDTV and use the supplied remote. In fact, it feels like this is what the camcorder companies would prefer you to do, because the editing software included with every one of the camcorders is almost unusable. That’s what this site is all about, the AVCHD players that we can use as substitutes to what we’ve been given when buying our HD Camcorders. There are a number of AVCHD players on the market, some are free, some are not, all have their own advantages and disadvantages. We’ve reviewed them to make choosing your AVCHD player easy. Feel free to leave comments on any AVCHD player and on any of our pages.