good quality video & stills

i purchased this camera for my daughter several weeks ago, having originally purchased a JVC GZ-MG175EK hard disk camera from comet at £249, which was taken back as the video quality was very grainy with low resolution.I am quite impressed with this camera, as the quality of video footage is very good & stills seem comparable to a dedicated sony 2.3mp camera we own. The sound recording quality is also excellent. Given the asking price on amazon(includes free tripod & bag which are good quality) i would say this is a very good buy for those who want a quality camera at a budget price. this camera seems to retail at over £400(argos £439).
for more reviews i would look on amazon.com as this camera seems to have been in the US for a while. This is a dvd camera & you may have read about problems with transferring dvd files to pc for editing. This has been no problem for me with this camera. here's how: all you do is plug the camera into your usb port.The camera now appears as a seperate drive. now just open the files within this drive till you see the vro file( this contains the mpeg2 movie).Now copy & paste the vro file to a folder of your choice on your pc. Next open windows media player & open the vro file. media player will state the file type is not recognised but select to play anyway. once the box is checked you will not be asked again.once the video plays, stop it & save the video with a name of your choice and the file ext name .mpeg. This can subsequently be recognized in most video editing software inc windows movie maker. as for down sides, the camera is a little heavier & more bulky than hard disc cams, but i find the weight better to keep the camera steady. there is no dedicated night vision facility but the camera video quality is good at even low light levels.

Worlds First Review !!

One of the main reasons i purchased this camera was the massive zoom and the fact you can manually zoom with the barrel ring.
With a zoom this large i think they take too slow to zoom in out out with the normal motorised method and thought the manual zoom would be the perfect solution and in keeping with my Olympus E410 DSLR when zooming manually.
How wrong was I !! the zoom seems to be motorised anyway you just control it manually instead, it,s very unresponsive and too responsive all in one !! hard too explain exactly ,Def not what i was expecting.
The handling is very awkward because of this and one handed use is out of the question.
Build quality and looks are superb and really feels and looks like a SLR,
nice size and weight as well.
Pic quality at base iso is fantastic and comparable to my E410 DSLR at 100 iso and 200 iso, at 400 iso the Dslr,s larger senser starts to take advantage and at 800 and beyond there is no compare at all, although colour and saturation is still good up to 800 iso and prob usefull for emergency use rather then missing the shot.
Interface is average and a bit long winded to be honest but features are excellent if you like playing around.
LCD is fantastic and viewfinder is pretty good as well with good light and resolution.
Autofocus is slow and the buffer writting seems slow after a shot,although the burst mode at lower res is very very good and the lcd does,nt black out so you can still compose while following the subject(very usefull)
Exposure and white balance seems very accurate and shots tend to come out very well exposed and natural.
Video mode is excellent and Macro is very very good.
I,m sure i could get better results and give better info about this camera in time but to be honest the Zoom has left me cold and is enough for me to rethink.
It,s a real shame no one makes a super zoom like the Canon S3 Or S5 2 step control which is instant,accurate and super super fast.
I think this camera would prob excel at wild life shots and General interest such as portrait,Buildings and landscape where the superb wide angle to tele range would come in to it,s own.
If your happy to take your time composing your shots and are in no particular rush then this could be for you but i would strongly recommend trying the zoom in a shop if you can.
If you like taking a bit of action and fast moving kids like myself ,this is def not the camera for you,and this is def not a DSLR replacement either.

Vista 64bit Compatible

Excellent camcorder, though heavy on the batteries.

This camcorder is windows vista 64bit compatible, it appears as a usb drive letter. Software that comes with it is also 64bit compatible. I was going to purchase the Sony HDR-SR5E , but sony do not support vista 64bit.

Does not include minisd card or HDMI cable (mini hdmi to hdmi)

GOOD BUY

I wasn't too sure what to expect when I bought this as this was my 1st camcorder. However, I am delighted with the purchase. I am more of a stills photographer, but wanted this to take on holiday with. Great quality movies and very easy to use. Comes with a handy remote control unit. So far I have found the battery life to be pretty good. I would certainly recommend this one. I got it next day delivery too as an Amazon Prime customer.

Sanyo Xacti HD1000 - Review

This Sanyo Xacti HD1000 HD Camcorder is excellent, all you could ever want that fits into a large Jacket pocket for carrying around.

It shoots in full 1080i, 1920x1080 via HDMI connection to your HDTV or 720p 720 lines at 60 frames per sec. (12 Mbit rate) MPEG4 H.264 codec thats very easy to edit on any modern PC.

I prefer the 720p 60fps over (full 1080i) I guess it looks better on my LCD HDTV.

The camera has a very large apature F1.8 which comes in handy for shooting in lowlight, also you can Boost the ISO away up to compensate for poor lighting without getting grainy or noisy, (very impressive)

You can plug your HD1000 footage into any external USB hard drive, then transfer and store all footage with all the supplied cables, USB, Component, HDMI, S-Video, and Composite. Its nice an convenient to just plug the Sanyo HD1000 into an external HD and store many hours of footage uncompressed without the need for a computer, the transfer is instant.

The camera is extremely well made, and beautifully designed, fits in the hand, just like a space age (Ray gun) - with an easy and intuitive functionality. Lots and lots of features to keep one busy.

I use 4GB and 8GB SDHC Memory cards (class 6 high speed), amazon.co.uk are cheapest for this type of SDHC storage media. On a 8GB SDHC Card I can record 100 mins in 720p 60fps (thats better than the competition can offer)...

The camera lens optics are razor sharp, very impressive and perform really well in most conditions.

9/10. for quality build, specs and beautiful picture quality at a decent price. Dont delay BUY today.!

oh!- nearly forgot to mention, comes with a very handy remote control, in the box with small battery ready to go, and I find it very useful when Im doing personal blogs, excellent... all included in the price.!

Sanyo Xacti CG65

I bought one of these on amazon pre christmas.Great little camera. It is remarkably compact and fits in a suit or jacket pocket without being noticed. That feature is good if you are carrying a phone and other gadgets. The second thing I noticed was it was lightweight and had a real quality feel about it. Flip out screen is a nice size and picture quality is good. Video quality was found to be very satisfactory as was the 6m pixel still camera. Handy zoom lens. It is intuitive to operate so users will not need to spend much time on the chunky manual. I bought a 2 gig card which gives me more or less 2 hours of video. I am not likely to need a larger card before downloading. Comes with usb and tv leads plus sep charger. Lens cap was included and a pouch. Would have liked to have seen a Sanyo leather case with the package. Camera looks very neat in black. I am very happy with this purchase and would highly recommend it to readers.

Tiny little gem

I have had my eye on this camcorder for a while now and after reading countless reviews etc i decided to take the plunge!

All in all im very pleased with it! its tiny! i was very suprised when i opened the box. Build quality is good and i got it the brown colour which looks really nice.

The quality is very good in good light and blows my old DV camcorder out the water! As for low light, i was expecting it to be bad after reading the reviews. But in all seriousness it is no worse than my old panasonic DV camera. All you have to do it choose the iso yourself and there will be little noise (i suggest iso 200 max)

Im only 20 so i dont want to be hauling a huge camcorder around when going abroad or taking my cam to the beach etc so this is perfect and it takes good quality stills to boot! There are lots of accessories in the box aswell.

Only thing is make sure you have a good spec computer if you plan on editing the video from the camera because the mp4 codec needs alot of processor power. My laptop can just about handle it but ive run into problems with the preview on my editing program being jumpy. So be careful.

So get this cam if u want a convenient camcorder that takes good quality video and stills in a small package you can take anywhere!

Good, however...

I've previously had a Xacti-C4, so I knew what I was getting here,however...

...the item is significantly thicker than the picture shows - it's somewhat misleading. What you can't see is that the main section of the camera is actually about 3-4mm thicker than in the photograph. It's actually got a bigger body than the CG model (obviously, I guess, because of the waterproofing). What they've done in the photograph for the item is tilt the camera in such a way that you can't see it. This means the unit is actually bigger than most of it's predecessors. The side you can't see is white.

However, the improvements in image quality, video quality (with small filesize too), features AND the fact that it's waterproof mean that you'd be daft to complain too much. The camera is still a winner. My criticism is not of the camera itself, more how vendors are using a standard"pose" to hide the true dimensions of the item.

I CANT BELIEVE THIS....

Having looked for ages at HD camcorders i finally went for the JVC 155 (knowing that i could return it if it didnt do what it said on the box.)

All I can say is ....JVC IS NEVER GETTING THIS BACK.

Its fantastic. Even my 8yr old daughter operates it and she didnt even read the instructions (which i had to). Colour, sound, zoom, functions, software, ease of use, watching on TV, transfer to PC and DVD is all soooooo easy. Anyone who has a problem with this piece of kit is clearly a person to avoid in all ways. Right...enough said....its movie time...again and again and again......

JVC Everio MG130EK

I brought one of these recently although not from Amazon. I think this is an excellent little camera with a few caveats. The image quality is ok for everyday stuff, but when you play it through the AV cable on a big tv you can see it is not brilliant. It is also not great in low light. It has an 800K CCD for capturing images and the photo stills are at 640 x 480 - about 0.4 Mega pixels, which compared to most modern stills cameras is worthless, but then why would you take stills with a video camera? If you want a better picture then try the MG155 and MG175 version which I understand have a 1 Megapixel CCD so should be slightly better image quality (approx 30 or 40 pound more)or the MG275 which seems to get good reviews with a 2.18MP CCD but again more money! The menus on the 130 are easy to use and good looking and the HDD system for retrieving your sections of film is also very simple and much better than tape. I use Pinnacle Studio to edit my footage, and the MOV files prove no problem to import, as long as you select all files when searching for them as the MOV format doesn't appear to be that standard, although all my players (windows media, Nero Showtime will play the files no problem at all). In summary a great camera - image quality not brilliant but slightly better than my old MiniDV camera, and ovearall a good cheap all rounder, and best of all tiny to hold and dead easy to use.

Frustrating

This is the most frustrating camera I have ever used. I have used tape, HDD and XD/SD cards on other cameras but never had the problems that I have experienced with this Xacti.

Yes the picture quality is as good as you want it, you can choose from internet quality to HD, but getting it from camera to computer is enough to make me want to throw this out the window! The video can be quite shaky no matter how well you hold the device and automatic exposure is fairly hit and miss. I have used an Olympus mju 1000 and the results are excellent and easily downloaded. There are better options in the market than this.

I am currently sitting while the camera 'processes' the disk...what the hell is it doing??? I can watch the images on the camera but ask it to download to my computer...nah, that would be too easy. It steadfastly refuses to part with a single byte, no amount of coaxing will encourage it to let me watch my daughter playing on the beach. Put the SD card in the card reader? No, that would just be common sense, we have to go through the docking station and if Xacti doesn't want to talk to desktop then forget about it, your treasured memories can sit rotting on an 8GB piece of plastic. I've formatted and reformatted my cards but nothing. I've missed valuable family moments all because of poor design.

Avoid this piece of imported rubbish, find an old box brownie, you would get more from it.

Excellent Camera for a Fantastic Price

I bought this camera recently with the arrival of our first child to be able to record general bits and pieces as all new dad's do!
For the cost I wasn't expecting a great deal but I've been really surprised at how easy and well this camcorder performs.
For someone who just wants to take general video of 'stuff' you really can't do much better than this for the price, a friend of mine was a bit dismissive of it however he's a professional and spends more on his kit than most people do their houses but for the price he had to conceed it certainly does the job!

HR 10 DVD Camcorder

I got this camcorder and a kit with a DVD,battery and softcase for £349.00. The picture quality from this machine is superb. My advice get one now while they are at this price I will use this as a spare or for my kids to use. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because the disc takes a while to initialise and finalise. You will also need AVCHD editing software to edit on a PC. Well built and easy to use a bargain at this price.

Technology comes cheap...

At £180 I continue to be amazed by price and quality of technology."Tape?", you may ask but as the media is cheap and having found it easy to do basic editting on my PC, I feel justified by the decision not to spend more money on a DVD-model. I selected the MD235 over the MD160 as it was cheaper and I didn't need a still photo feature. Also, the camera records in widescreen as standard & has an optional mic input which may come in handy in the future. Straight out of the box, I found the camera was easy to use. The camera is light and compact. The zoom is quick and focussing reasonably rapid though low light performance isn't that good with the"LCD light" practically useless. The playback and image quality is lovely and colours are vibrant and lively. On the LCD, the joystick menu system works better for me than Sony's touchscreen technology as it's a easier to navigate the menus. All in all, very pleased and would recommend highly.

I also bought DVK-203 Accessory Kit (Extended Life Battery, Carry Case & Tape) which helped get things going too. The camera doesn't come with a firewire cable so I ordered one too...

Great camera for great quality filming

I can't wait to get out and about and start filming with the superb camera (just waiting for my case to arrive) - from what I have filmed so far (using the highest quality settings) the quality is spot on with images as sharp and clear as ones you'd expect to see from a TV documentary, I do agree with other reviews that the low light quality is a bit grainy but if you set the exposure to manual and tweak the settings you can reduce this to an acceptable level. The quality in good light is brilliant, you can zoom in and see an incredible amount of detail - I tried zooming into our carpet (just to experiment ;) and you could see the fine fibres that you can't even see with your naked eye.

On highest quality the battery provided gives you and estimated 108mins - which exceeded what I expected - the 4Mb memory card provided gives you about 31mins. Obviously there are numerous options to turn down the quality to give you many more minutes if you don't require the high resolution in your shots.

The stills are good too but perhaps not as good as an actual dedicated 6.1Mb digital camera. If you zoom in to a picture on the computer after transfer you can't zoom too far before you start to see the some amount of graininess (since you are magnifying the image) - but for taking snaps it does the job and if your bothered about high res stills then maybe getting a separate dedicated digital camera would be advised.

I have not played around with the software much but it appears to be comprehensive and easy to use - I transferred some material and rendered it as a HD DIVX and the quality on playback was top notch.

The actual camera looks great and looks very robust, the screen is very clear and the night mode includes an infra-red light so if you want to film in the total dark you can!