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Customer Reviews: Average Rating:  Rating :  - Great camera ... BUT
I bought this camera back in December 2004 just before going on a trip to Europe, at the time it was the "bee's knees" in camcorders. It was the most amazing little gadget I had owned at the time, and I was thrilled with the results. I'm still very happy with the results, but there are quite a few issues with it.
Firstly, you can't do anything with the video you've shot - even getting clips onto your PC is a chore. Sometimes the computer finds the camera, more often it doesn't. I've now given up getting anything onto the PC, and I just watch the video on the TV unedited. The software that comes with it is completely useless. All you can do is stitch together different clips in their entirety. I managed to do this ONCE in 2 years, but never got the software to burn a DVD of what I had stitched together - the software crashed the computer every time I tried to do it, so I gave up trying.
Secondly, like so many other people, disc errors pop up every once in a while. I admit I have been lucky with it, and have only had a couple, but then again, I haven't used this camera much in all that time, and you just don't know when its going to happen. (I had a disc error when I put a new SONY DVD into the camera in St Petersburg, Russia. I didn't have another DVD with me, so I have no video of St Petersburg at all.)
Lastly, finalising a disc is a nightmare. You spend 10 or 15 mins chewing your nails to the quick waiting for the camera to start beeping and flashing 'DISC ERROR' at you, thus loosing everything you've shot. Again, this has only happened to me a handful of times, but it happens right at the moment when you don't want it to happen. I lost the whole of the west of Ireland because of a disc error during finalising - once again, a SONY disc. Its not as if you can just put another disc in and go back to Ireland to reshoot it all. The 3 or 4 other times its happened was close to home, when I just did go back and reshoot it another day. But what if it had been something important, like the birth of a child or a wedding, like other reviewers have had?
After reading so many horror stories about this camera, I can say I'm one of the lucky few. My camera has only done the dirty on me a couple of times, but then again, every time I use it, I think to myself, 'Is this the time its gonna stuff up???' Which is a real pity, because on the whole its been a nice little camera, and has traveled with me to a lot of places, and has generally been great. But ... you just never know when the moment will come.
Using Sony discs wont solve the disc error problem. I've only ever used Sony brand discs, and they also give errors when the camera feels like it. And the camera hates DVD+R discs - I wasted money on a whole packet of these, only to have every one of them get a DISC ERROR from the camera when I first put them in. Obviously it only likes DVD-R discs.
I would say, save your nerves and don't buy any DVD camcorder, no matter what the brand. They're far too temperamental and the technology too dodgy. + See Full Customer Review |  |
