Holiday 2005 Camcorder Buyers Guide By David Elrich Technology is wonderful thing. Imagine watching your child take her first step and recording the exciting event with beautifulvideo and outstanding sound. Or capturing your son swinging for the fences at a Little League game or any of life’s memories–no matter how big or small. That’s what a camcorder can do for you.Although they’re relatively easy to use, sorting through the over 100 models currently available is the challenge. We can help you wade through them with this buyer’s guide. We’ll walk you throughthe entire process—except putting our credit card on the counter. That we leave to you… Format Follies Who said life was simple? There are almost a dozen camcorderformats but the most popular is MiniDV with DVD-based models catching the public’s attention. And although there are analog camcorders still available we suggest you shun them. Just as digital DVDsreplaced VHS tapes for home videos, analog camcorder formats are quickly fading away. As you shop around, you’ll notice the majority of camcorders available today are digital. And just as important,prices of digital camcorders have dropped below $300, making your decision to go digital relatively painless. As a sign of the times Panasonic’s PV-GS19 and SamsungSC-D353 have $349 list prices so they’ll even cost less as you search for best deals in stores, online or mail order. We’ve even seen MiniDV camcorders for under $200 from more aggressiveretailers during crazy sales but they’re usually last year’s models. 
Panasonic PV-GS19 and Samsung SC-D353 Current Camcorder Formats: Digital Digital8 (D8) Digital Videocassette (Mini DV) DVD-RAM DVD-R/RW DVD+RW HDV MicroMV MPEG2/MPEG4 Analog VHS-C Super-VHS-C High-Band 8mm(Hi8mm) The Next Step In order to get you on the right path for choosing a new camcorder it’s important to understand a bit of technical talk regarding the quality of the variousformats, which are typically measured in lines of horizontal resolution. Horizontal resolution is a measurement of detail in a single scanning line of a video picture (525 scanning lines make up thebasic analog U.S. video system). The higher the resolution, the better picture you’ll see. So watching a TV show with a high horizontal resolution specification means you’ll see more detail in skintones, fabrics, strands of hair, and gradations of color–everything–that’s shown. Standard analog American TV broadcasts deliver 330 lines of horizontal resolution at best. VHS VCRs? Anywherebetween 240 and 270. It’s one of the reasons DVD players are so popular since they deliver close to 500 lines of resolution. Digital TV broadcasts offer even better quality than DVD but at this timethis system does not have a major impact on your camcorder decision except at the higher end of the camcorder market. That said, anyone really serious about watching home videos on their new HDTVsshould check out the new wave of HDV camcorders, led by the $2,000 Sony HDR-HC1. 
Sony HDR-HC1 Almost a decade ago in late 1995, the Digital Camcorder Era arrived. Sony and Panasonic introduced the first Mini Digital Video (DV) format models and the cheapest was $3,000.Since then, prices dropped over 90 percent! This is one of the reasons we love the consumer electronics business. The DV cassette is 1/12th the size of a T-120 VHS tape. Even moreimportantly, the camcorders record digital video and sound, not analog like S-VHS-C and High-band 8mm. Quality jumps to 500 lines of resolution or more. You can record 16-bit digital audio, the sameas a CD or two 12-bit soundtracks. Since the recorded picture is digital there is no degradation when you make duplicates for editing. Quality is outstanding. Yet technology never standsstill. In 2001, the first DVD-RAM camcorders arrived from Hitachi and Panasonic. Rather than tapes, the Hitachi DZ-MV100A and Panasonic VDR-M10 recorded images on 8-centimeter (3-inch) discs. Videoquality is the same as the wildly popular DVD format. This was a major breakthrough and Hitachi is pushing the format with four models in 2005. The DZ-MV730A costs sells for under $500 compared to the original DZ-MV100A for $1,999! In order to view the disc at its best,you need a DVD-RAM player/recorder, a DVD player with RAM playback or a PC with a DVD-RAM drive. The Hitachi RAM Cams also record on DVD-R discs (record once, not record many like DVD-RAM). DVD-Rdiscs–called "dash R" — play back in most DVD players. Panasonic’s VDR-M53 andVDR-M73 also record on DVD-R discs as well as DVD-RAMs. 
Hitachi DZ-MV730A and PanasonicVDR-M53 Late in 2003 Sony gave the burgeoning DVD camcorder category a major shot in the arm, as it introduced three disc-based models. The key difference between the Sonys and theHitachi/Panasonic models is format. As noted, Hitachi and Panasonic feature DVD-RAM/R or -RW while Sony in an unusual stance is more agnostic. Its newest models record in the –R/RW and +RWformats but not RAM. Quality for both is very similar. The key decision is your equipment. Make sure it is compatible before you choose one or the other. Also in 2003, Panasonic unveiled theSV-AV100, a tiny camcorder that records video onto Secure Digital (SD) solid-state memory cards. Thesupplied 512MB cards are postage-stamp-sized and hold around 10 minutes of MPEG2 DVD quality video recorded at a relatively high 6 Mbps (megabits per second) transfer rate. Be aware that DigitalVideo is recorded at 12 Mbps, so the quality is not quite the same. More affordable 1GB cards now let you record 20 minutes of highest-quality video. 
Read more...
