CES 2011: Panasonic will let you record TV to SD cards

The trickle of pre-CES news has been fairly dull stuff so far, but Panasonic has taken things up a level with an announcement out of Japan this morning.

The company plans to introduce a new line of Viera TV sets that will allow users to record HD television programming directly onto an SD, SDHD or SDXC memory card (the same kinds found in most digital cameras).

The 42-inch LCD set (with LED backlighting), which goes on sale in Japan on Feb 18, will cost roughly $1800. Users are able to “schedule” recordings via the device – and record to a USB-attached hard drive as well.

A 16 GB SDHD card will hold roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes of programming, while a 64GB SDXC card will hold around 5 hours. It’s unclear from the announcement if the programs will be in a proprietary format or if owners of the set will be able to watch the shows on other devices via the card.

Right now the set is only slated to be available in Japan, but that’s likely to change when Panasonic begins making CES announcements in January.