The CMOS sensor used in the HV10, HV20, and VIXIA HV30 are a 1/2.7 inch 2.96 megapixel sensor with true 1920 x 1080 HD sensing capability for 1080i HDV format video.
1080i HDV format video is an industry ratified MPEG2 video encoding standard with an interlaced resolution of 1440 horizontal anamorphic pixels by 1080 vertical pixels and uses a color sampling rate of 4:2:0 with a 25mbps data rate.
This data rate is the same as MiniDV so that the same tapes may be used for recording formats.