We've seen several waterproof products in the past few months, and it looks like the technology has caught on enough to be included in one of Sony's popular Handycam camcorders. The HDR-GW77V, announced yesterday for the Japanese market, can be dunked in water as deep as five meters (16 feet) for up to an hour. It should also repel dust and can be dropped from a height of 1.5 meters (five feet). Otherwise, the HDR-GW77V is a nice but fairly normal high-definition camcorder that can shoot in 1080p resolution and take 20.4-megapixel stills with 10x optical zoom and 16GB of internal storage. It's rounded out with a few extra features, including a built-in GPS for geotagging and mapping pictures or video.

In Japan, the new Handycam will be released on May 25th at a suggested price of 70,000 yen ($870 US). We haven't seen any indication of an international release yet. While this is the first waterproof addition to the Handycam line, it's not the first such Sony camera. The ruggedized Bloggie Sport, released last month, was also waterproof up to 16 feet.