HD Home Video is Awesome
Pros:
Stunning HD video
Random access
Super night shot
Super slow motion
Cons:
MANY BATTERY COMPATIBILITY ISSUES!!!
Editing of HD video not quite there yet.
The Bottom Line:
If you want HD video now, get this camera or the SR1 (if you have a big hard drive on your computer).
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
BATTERY PROBLEM ALERT: This unit (and some SR1s) do not accept the 91 series batteries that are listed in the documentation to work with the units. This problem has been reported by numerous users. Sony is refusing to acknowledge the problem as of yet. Please report all your issues directly to Sony!
___________ Original review:
When it was time to buy a new camcorder, I knew I wanted an HD one. I did my research online and found that Sony had 3 basic consumer models. Canon had 1 and there was one other from a third company. The Sony models included an HDV (tape based) a UX1 (DVD) and an SR1 (Harddrive). I weighed the pros and cons of each. Hated tape in my old camcorder, all the FF and RW stuff just to find something, made playing and dubbing stuff a pain, and in my mind is just old technology. I also noted that version of their HD camera had no mic jack and a smaller LCD screen. Between the DVD and HDD versions the HDD version price was about $300-400 more retail. You would have to have a computer or other harddrive to back up all your stuff to as well once you filled the 30 GIG drive (about 4 hours worth of video). Although the DVD version doesn't offer a whole lot of storage per DVD, it easy to save your video in these nice tiny little mini-DVDs and you can use dual layer ones for more storage.
The visuals are awesome. Played from my camcorder via HDMI or componant, my outdoor video looks as good as DiscoveryHD channel stuff. Its 1080i. Inside stuff needs to be properly lit, but that is the case with anything. The audio is pretty good as well with surround mics built in. You can shoot SD video as well and then play those DVD right in your DVD player. For the HD stuff, you can play it in your computer with the supplied software or convert to MPEG. You can also play the HD discs in a blu-ray or HD-DVD player. Don't have either yet so can't test that.
The best thing about the camera, aside from the amazing images, is the touch screen. Its great. You can access your clips or organize them into any order. This feature can't be done in such a fashion on a tape based recorder. You can off load your video to a computer as well. The format the camera uses for HD is AVCHD which uses the same codec as the Bluray and HD-DVDs so should be compatable with newer technology stuff. Newer software will make editing it in HD possible in the near future. If you want HD quality video memories now, I don't see how you can go wrong with this thing. I love mine. I paid just short of $1200 for it. I have also purchased a wide angle lense and video light for it.
Built in is a 4MP still camera as well. It does a good job of capturing photos, and with the 10x optical and 80x digital zoom, you can get closer than you could to stuff with most digital cameras. use a tripod though. It takes sony Memory Stick DUO (make sure you get DUO). I have a 2MP card in mine, which will take like 1000 photos.
Becareful on buying batteries. One OEM I bought wasn't recognized by the camera. It seems Sony really wants you to only buy Sony products. It will warn you when you use a non-Sony DVD as well, but will allow it. but it appears it may not work with non-Sony batteries.
