Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I've been waiting to get a HD camcorder because I wanted an integrated still camera that had a descent mega pixel resolution, it seem that Sony now makes one that recorders video at 1080P and has a 10.5 MP still camera and it all records to a hard drive. This camera is about $1400 which is a little expensive for recording the kids playing in the back yard, and my HDTV is only 720p. The biggest problem however is that once you have recorded the video there doesn’t seem to be a good way to save the data unless you buy a blue ray burner and player which will probably run another $1000. In the end I'll be paying quite a bit of money to move into the HD arena and I'm not sure I'm ready yet. Has anyone done this yet, should I wait another year before doing this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I was also eyeing the new HD camcorders, but I'm in the same boat as you--no blu-ray. So, I settled for the JVC Everio: 60 gb hard drive, records at 720x480, and only $449 at Costco. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 I've already got a standard video camera that still works fine, I'm just tired of carrying around a camcorder and a digital camera every where we go. That's why it would be nice to have all of it packaged together, plus it's just cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 How about some streaming-to-TV box like and AppleTV? It does 720P TVs very nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Yes but how do you store the data long term, I know the easiest way to play it back would be to just plug the camcorder into the TV but when the hard drive on the thing fills up what do you do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Buy more hard drive. For 720P video I'm running at about 1.5 gigs per hour, which is about 20 cents at today's prices. The videos sit on the computer and stream to the @TV (the box will play anything in the associated computer(s) iTunes libraries seamlessly when iTunes is running in the background) so the @TV doesn't actually need a lot of hard drive. Newegg.com has a sale on some 750GB internal drives for $99, which would be good for about 500 hours of video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Just copy the files from camcorder HD to computer HD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 HD is an option but what about crashes or corruption; we all know that hard drives won't last forever. I know that disks can be scratched or can go bad after a while if not taken care of, but for long term storage isn't optical media a better solution than a hard drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 (edited) So burn the files to dvd's. They will just be movie files, only difference is they will be at a larger resolution. Edited June 18, 2008 by Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 If you have a little larger budget, and a little longer timeline... http://gizmodo.com/379530/red-scarlet-3k-hd-pocket-pro-camera-under-3000 ....if you do go with the Sony, I would rent or borrow one for a few days to really look at the quality. I am pretty sure sony has been producing movie quality camera for awhile, but I have always been skeptical of the image quality of there point and shoots. Which is what I am guessing would be built into that camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 That thing is sweet, but I'd probably have to wait a few years before it got down into my price range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 If you author a movie for blu ray players but burn it to DVD (it can't be very long this way) you can usually play that on a blu ray player. Unfortunately, the optical media for high def just hasn't caught up to anywhere near hard drives in terms of price/performace. Blu ray players and burners and media are so expensive you could probably make an external firewire mirror RAID be more cost effective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 That's what I was afraid of, I've seen prices for blank blue ray disks at $25 a piece which is simply outrageous. I guess I could store the video on hard drives and DVD's until the price comes down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Yes, you could store the raw video on your computer's HD; author an HD movie; copy it back to your camcorder; then play it back on your tv. At least until you get a PS3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 This is all very facinating. I had no idea that 1080P camcorders were this affordable. I'll be looking very seriously at the sony camera myself now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gfa2 Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 This is all very facinating. I had no idea that 1080P camcorders were this affordable. I'll be looking very seriously at the sony camera myself now. My cousin just bought one and the footage looks really nice on his 1080 HDTV. He has XP media edition on PC, so he's hoping to store his video on the computer and watch it on the tv. I've never messed with the media edition of XP, but seems like it should work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gfa2 Posted June 19, 2008 Share Posted June 19, 2008 Just got an email about this. HP Media Smart Connect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnvid Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 (edited) HI Maxer, Ive been using HD for a couple of years now, and would recomend Hard drives to store the data, a 1TB samsung for 200 dollars or less(as you probably know you can never have enough HD space), to me it is far better than bluray.. No way, do I want that format to take off because as you mention the price of disks (god knows when a and how much a 50GB disc will be... it will be a joke and other technology is just around the corner, you could get 25GB of storage on normal DVD's for what $2. When you capture you can segment the video files at 4.2GB and keep a version on your HD and a backup on the DVD's If you get a video player like mine, The Helios x3000 or x5000, (less than $500, upgradeable firmware) you can play the dvd's out at 1080p or 720...you can also plug in the HD to the helios's USB socket and play the files from USB HD, Ethernet, or Wireless reciever. The specs of the camera sound quite good, but look into how easy it is to control if you plan on using it for anything serious, also look into the High Speed (ie 250fps) functions of some of the sony range, if you want to have something to experiment with.. And think about what your missing in terms of memories if oyu hold out for another year..HD is great. Oh and also try to get a camera with tape drive, as tape is cheap, and you can always get more tapes when out on the road. if you run out of hard-disk or worse the internal drive messes up thats not so good Edited June 20, 2008 by johnvid extra info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 If you get a video player like mine, The Helios x3000 or x5000, (less than $500, upgradeable firmware) you can play the dvd's out at 1080p or 720...you can also plug in the HD to the helios's USB socket and play the files from USB HD, Ethernet, or Wireless reciever. So the Helios is some kind of super DVD player that upconverts DVD to 1080P, and allows you to play HD video directley from your computer? How does it interface with the computer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 John- You do want this format to take off, because that's how the prices will drop. Remember what CDR used to cost? And DVDR when it was new? Give it a couple years of being popular and the drives will be under $100 and the discs under $2. Devin- Upconverting DVD players are nothing new - they play your 480i/p DVD over a 1080p/i/780p connection, usually doing some processing to make it look nice, but the claims that some companies make that these players make DVDs look as good as HD content is not at all true, to anybody with a good eye for this stuff. It's like playing lower res video on a higher res computer monitor with good software - looks nice, but not the same as high res video. The Helios players combine an upconverting DVD player with a video stream / USB video player, like one of those HP boxes plus DVD but maybe with a different selection of formats supported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnvid Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 So the Helios is some kind of super DVD player that upconverts DVD to 1080P, and allows you to play HD video directley from your computer? How does it interface with the computer? It has some network software you install on the computer, it has an ethernet socket & wireless reciever built in, I only have the x3000 got it for about $350 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnvid Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 John- You do want this format to take off, because that's how the prices will drop. Remember what CDR used to cost? And DVDR when it was new? Give it a couple years of being popular and the drives will be under $100 and the discs under $2. QUOTE] I wonder how many years it will take for them to get to those prices, by which time there will be something else. When they have 1TB Disks (and they are planned) cheaper than 1TB harddrives,Then I will start to choose my format. Yes the helios up-converts...But it also does play 1080p 1080i or 720 or many others "without upconverting", as long as the data rate is within what the disk can handle...about 16MBs which is not the full data-rate I admit but most people couldn't tell. it has about 10 different screen resolutions that you can change at startup. For now its a good enough presentation unit, the media boxes are just as good (if not better) as they are not limited to the speed of the DVD drive. here are a couple of nice ones that play all these formats using the sigma chipset HD File format(.TP, .TRP, .TS)-WMV9 format and WMV9 HD format MPEG1/2/4(IFO, ISO, DAT), DivX, XVID http://www.kjglobal.co.uk/acatalog/Multi-Media_Players.html BIG one - http://www.kjglobal.co.uk/acatalog/IAMM_NTD37HD.html SMALL n SEXY - http://www.kjglobal.co.uk/acatalog/IAMM_NTD26_HD.html Apparently Toshiba are going back to DVD to milk some more, out of the format, it is possible to write on normal DVD's with blue laser tech, to get more data. I did want HD-DVD to win the war as it was going to do it cheaper than Blu-Ray, even though the Blue-Ray logo looks so sexy But I really do want BluRay to fail..I am sick of beng ripped off by half way house technology, they really keep plugging it as a Movie format for Hollwood Movies. All I want to do is back up my never ending amounts of data without it costing a fortune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 I wonder how many years it will take for them to get to those prices, by which time there will be something else. When they have 1TB Disks (and they are planned) cheaper than 1TB harddrives,Then I will start to choose my format. That's exactly what we used to think about DVDR. And hard drives - I remember those being 5MB and nobody having one because they were too expensive. My first DVD player cost more than my PS3. My family's first VCR cost more than that. Our first 27" tube TV cost more than my 50" SXRD. Our first IBM PC cost more than my Macbook Pro. And you're talking about Blu Ray like the prices are fixed forever. All new tech is expensive, and when it's consumer it always comes down in price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 If you believe what everyone says Blue Ray will be the last physical media for movies as downloads begin to replace them. It's not that far away now, and like others have pointed out hard drive space is cheap and getting more reliable. Still it's going to be a few years before that happens and in that time the price of blue ray players and media will drop significantly as more and more people adopt it. I think blue ray is going to have a much shorter life time than DVD has; I give it 10 years max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 Also, talking about capacity is redundant. As the more capacity becomes cheaper, we merely increase files sizes to up quality, which means the storage 'per job' is changing also. As players become faster, so the filesizes can be larger/hiogher quality etc. Waiting for new tech before you buy is a mugs game really. If you need something, buy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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