HD Camcorder £139.99

Surely the issue is not simply the price but whether its actually any good? There have been cheap Camileo's around for ages, Littlewoods have a HD Practika camcorder for under £100.

Sui_Generis wrote: »

Surely the issue is not simply the price but whether its actually any good? There have been cheap Camileo's around for ages, Littlewoods have a HD Practika camcorder for under £100.

True.

I think people see "HD" and expect the picture quality to be amazing, when in reality it's not that great - these low cost cameras are usually just upscaling a standard resolution image. Also the sound quality on some can be appalling. But I think this Tosh is well regarded for what it is. The 5x optical zoom is a bonus, as the digital zoom will be terrible.

Aldi were selling a very similar looking 10x optical zoom camera by Traveler in Autumn last year - very good value - bundled with a 4GB SD card, case etc for £129. I had one in my hand, was walking to the checkout with it and suddenly thought "Credit crunch! Do I really NEED this?" and put it back! Second biggest regret of my life so far (no, actually third biggest).

A couple of months later they had a smaller one, again by Traveler but with a fixed focus lens (no optical zoom) for £60, so I got that one. The picture quality is a bit disappointing at first, but you soon get used to it and the sound quality is actually very good, so the school plays came across well.

If you want to play the clips on your big HD telly, don't expect them to play in a DVD player without conversion - I think most of these cameras use h.264 encoding which isn't well supported in the AVI container by standalone players.

You'll get some conversion software, but it will downscale the resolution. The only way you get "HD" is to connect the camera directly to the telly via HDMI, and it will most likely have the mini socket on it, so you'll need a convertor (mine didn't come with one). The resulting quailty isn't really that bad considering the price.

Inspite of it's shortcoming, there's no denying that my Traveler is very handy and simple to use, the sort of thing you can just have in a glovebox or bag, and in my opinion it's far better to have loads of ropey looking videos of the kids as they grow up than just a few good ones, if you see what I mean.



I wish I'd got the bigger one with the optical zoom though.

Sui_Generis wrote: »

Well here's another Camileo Pro HD for £105 - hope that helps

Yes I got that newsletter too - this one is the same style as the Traveler one I've got, but the lens barrel is bigger and it has a 3x optical zoom, so that bodes well for image quality.

Sui_Generis wrote: »

@ Lutz
agree completely. I've stuck with miniDV so far because of the convenience of storing the video and the relatively high cost of HD but I keep getting tempted by Sanyo Xacti HDs...

Yeah - they look good. For me it's all about convenience - I bought a full size Sony Digital8 camcorder eight years ago when the first kid landed, but after the initial interest it's just sat in the top of a wardrobe for 6 years untouched. Brilliant bit of kit, but way too bulky - you feel so left out of what's going on when you use it. These new diddy ones are great!