Our old camcorder, an aging JVC Hi-8 had finally reached the point where it was not worth investing more money into to bring it back to a serviceable state - so the hunt began for a replacement.

My goals with the new camcorder was a mix of convenience and digital savviness. I wanted a simple point-and-shoot camcorder that even my children could operate, yet provided the power and features to allow me to import the movies to our Mac and edit them, producing the occasional "Home Movie".

My initial instinct was to look at MiniDV camcorders, but since I dub all of my movies onto DVD eventually anyways, sticking with magnetic tape media seemed unnecessary. Add to that the foolishly high cost of MiniDV cassettes (nearly $10 per 60 minute tape for archival quality) I could see my home-movie habit becoming increasingly expensive.

Besides, I've already got stacks of Hi-8 cassettes kicking around from our old camcorder, and I really didn't want to start a whole new collection of cassettes when DVD's are simply much more convenient.

So, with those decisions in mind, I looked at the hard drive camcorder options and came across the JVC Everio GZ-MG130 at the local big-box electronic store, and subsequently purchased it.

Initial Thoughts/Unboxing:

The unit was well packed and all of the items were individually sealed. I discovered that the USB cable that was supposed to be included was missing, but I cannot rule out that it went missing at the store since the box had clearly been opened.

Included with the camera is a full function remote, standard RCA style audio/video cables, the AC charger (which has a surprisingly long cord), a variety of manuals, a CDROM including Pc-Based software, warranty sheets, etc.

The included battery pack was shipped discharged. The included charger cable was very straightforward to plug into the camera (to the clearly labeled port behind a small protective rubber flap) and a LED indicates that the battery was charging.

Manuals & Software:

I took a brief look at the manual and was surprised to find that it was very poorly translated from (presumably) Chinese. It was riddled with the sorts of mistakes that one would expect to see in a cheap chinese-knockoff MP3 player, but would be totally unexpected on a brand name item such as this.

Even on the Camcorder body itself, the statement "IN EXTENDED USE UNIT HEAT UP THIS IS NORMAL" is further proof of a lack of attention to the details on behalf of JCV.

Again, one expects this sort of thing when you buy cheap electronics from overseas, but on a high ticket item like this, having the manual, and even the actual physical hardware itself riddled with grammatical and spelling mistakes makes JVC look bad.

The included CDROM turned out to include only PC (Windows) based software which was of no use to me on my Mac computer. Having read a few reviews online it seems as if the software is functional, but not fancy by any means. I cannot review it beyond this point since I've admittedly not used it.

No Mac software was included, and although the manual does refer to the process of connecting the camera to a Mac and accessing the hard drive, it doesn't go beyond that point and actually suggest how you should subsequently work with the resulting files.

Much more on that later in my review.

The manuals, once you get past the difficulties you might have reading them, are acceptable. That said, the camera itself is fairly straightforward to operate for those who would be considered tech-savvy or have ever operated a camcorder before, so like myself you probably won't refer to the manuals a great deal beyond clarifying a few operational items.

It is worth a read regardless since there are a few hidden features and menu options that may not be immediately evident regardless, but for someone who simply wants to get started quickly, you won't need to read the manuals to accomplish such.

The unit powers on quickly, and is ready to go - flip open the manual lens cover, and your set!

In use / Picture Quality

My first experiences with the camera were late in the evening in our living room with most of the lights turned off.

The camera was in "Auto" mode and as such automatically turned on the built in light. It was adequate to light up items that were close to the lens, but quickly looses its effectiveness for anything beyond a few feet.

There is a "Night Mode" on the camera, but it slows the recording frame rate down significantly to almost a "Strobe" effect when activated. This seems to improve the cameras ability to record in low light, but results in an almost unwatchable result after the fact.

I initially thought that something was wrong when I discovered this "strobe effect", but after reading the manual and a few reviews, it appears to be intentional.

Odd.

If I needed to do a great deal of low light recording, I would immediately discount this camera right out of the gate since it's simply not suitable for those needs.

That said, the next day when I got into normal (indoor and outdoor) lighting conditions, I was overall quite pleased. The sample recordings that I took (about 30 minutes worth total) appeared to be of good quality when played back on our 53' widescreen.

The widescreen aspect (as I had setup on the camera) was properly preserved throughout the filming so there was no distortion caused by filming in pan-and-scan, and then stretching to "simulate" a wide screen picture.

Being a hard drive camera that relies on "on the fly" MPEG compression, there was an ever so slight amount of artifact visible in situations where the camera was moved (or zoomed) very quickly. Most people would probably not even notice this, but if you look close with a trained eye, you might occasionally notice such.

Not a show stopper for me, but those contemplating using this camera for semi-professional use may want to ensure that their chosen subject matter isn't going to bring out this issue in the camera while in use.

The onscreen menu system provides all the setup functions for the camera. A small joystick on the screen itself, along with a small variety of other buttons near the screen provide all of the navigation and control features.

The onscreen menu itself is functional and easy to navigate. Most items are self explanatory and easy to enable or disable, but I had to refer to the manual to clarify a few items such as the item labeled "DIS" - which turned out to be the menu option for controlling the "Digital Image Stabilization".

Generally, however, most people will be able to navigate and setup this camera without need for the manual.

There area a variety of recording quality options included which allows you to use the hard drive space according to your needs. I immediately set it (and have only subsequently used it) in the maximum quality setting which still allows for about 7 full hours of recording until the hard disk is full. In the economy mode (which most people report to be similar to VHS quality) you can supposedly fit over 30 hours of video before the drive is full. There are also "Fine" and "Normal" settings which presumably offer other middle of the road options.

For most people who want to extract maximum picture quality and won't feel constrained with 7 hours of capacity (who would?) the "Ultra Fine" maximum setting would seem to be the only logical choice.

Post Recording Video Handling

Once you have recorded your event, a simple button push places the camera in playback mode. Once again, the small joystick on the screen is used to navigate and operate the camera in this mode.

You can playback each portion of your recording individually, or all at once, as well as performing various other features such as "Locking" (Protecting against deletion) individual scenes, deleting unwanted scenes, etc.

One should be careful to not accidentally erase anything while in these menus, however - unlike traditional tape media where accidentally erasing something would require a major flub, with a hard drive camcorder, once it's deleted (accidentally or otherwise), it's permanent history.

Once you have recorded all you want, what do you do with it now?

In my own case, I have several options - connect it to my standalone DVD recorder (via the included RCA cables) and simply dub the raw footage onto a DVD, or import it to my iMac and edit/produce the video for burning to a DVD later.

There is also an optional JVC Everio standalone DVD burner that can be purchased which provides true "one touch" DVD burning. For anyone who does not already own a standalone DVD recorder or who does not want/need/know how to import the video to your computer to burn it there, this external burner would be a virtual necessity in my mind. Without it, those who are not technically savvy might find themselves with a full hard drive on the camcorder, and no easy way to actually store the video and clear the hard drive for future recordings.

One of my main goals for this camera was to enable myself to import the video to our Mac and edit it, however.

Unfortunately my major disappointment with the Everio MG130 started there.

Computer Based Import/Edit

JVC seems to have strayed from the accepted digital camcorder standards with the entire Everio series and instead of conforming to the usual Firewire connection standards, the Everio series uses USB instead.

Unfortunately this means that many common computer based video editing suites (including iMovie on the Mac) that would otherwise automatically recognize a digital camcorder and streamline the importation process simply looks at the Everio and gets confused.

When the camera is connected to a PC or Mac, it simply mounts itself as an external hard drive.

This has the benefit of allowing extremely quick and direct access to the files (and even allows you to use the camera as a storage or work drive for editing your videos afterwards) it can quickly leave many people extremely confused since you need to navigate through various nested directories to actually find your video files, only to discover them mixed in with several other "information" files in the end directory.

Since each scene you record (every time you press the record button on the camera and then subsequently press stop) results in another individual file on the hard drive, the quantity of files can be overwhelming if it has been some time since you empied the drive.

Additionally, once a certain number of files has been reached, the camcorder makes another new directory and them starts storing subsequent files there.

For the layperson who finds directory surfing confusing at the best of times, this could lead to a great deal of trouble finding all of the video files.

Further complicating this situation is JVC's ridiculous support of the strange and uncommon ".mod" video format.

The .mod format is another version of the more standardized .mpg video format, and simply renaming the resulting .mod files to the .mpg format will reportedly solve format incompatibilities for many, but for many others results in further issues with the audio tracks disappearing.

Why JVC decided to go this way is baffling to me, and based upon the thousands of comments I have read on the internet from people who are quite stumped and frustrated with the issues that result from this choice, I am not alone.

So, you have access to your files, but how do you work with them?

If your video editing software of choice directly supports the .mod format, you are all set - simply import it and edit away.

If like myself, the .mod format is problematic, you must first convert the files to a more standardized format first - in my case, the .dv (Digital Video) format.

I will be writing a tutorial in the next while on exactly how to streamline this process, so check back if you are interested, or contact me through epinions if I forget to post a link to it here.

So, needing to convert your files in order to edit them adds another layer of complexity to the process of editing your videos on your computer.

Does this all make your brain hurt?

For many who are not tech savvy, this can quickly become a very frustrating camcorder, hence my earlier strong suggestion for the JVC "one touch" DVD recorder, or the use of a standalone DVD recorder.

The options that the hard drive features opens up can quickly become evident for those who are not scared of the realities behind it, however reading the stories of woe on the internet can clearly show that allot of people have found it complicated to the point of frustration.

JVC's insistence to use the silly .mod video format only further complicates the situation for many who might have otherwise been able to adequately operate this camcorder while connected to a computer, but instead get overwhelmed by the requirement for not only editing software, but a sometimes confusing and time consuming extra conversion step.

One fringe benefit of direct read/write access to the cameras hard drive (aside from the speedy access) is that it can act as a true external hard drive.

Since my Mac was rather tight on hard drive space to begin with, when I performed the disc intensive conversion process of the video from the .mod format to the .dv format necessary to utilize iMovie, I simply told my conversion program to store the converted file in a new directory right back on the camcorder itself.

Even with 3.5 hours of high quality video on the hard drive one would still be left with approximately 15 gigabytes of hard drive space on the camcorder, which opens up lots of possibilities for those who might need just the "extra little bit" of hard drive space while editing videos.

The biggest advantage of the hard drive system (versus tape) aside from the very large amount of storage space is the fact that importation of video is extremely fast since the computer is able to access the raw camera data.

Whereas importation of MiniDV video is a "Real Time" process (1 hour of video takes 1 hour to import), hard drive camcorders can import the same amount of video in only minutes.

Along with the lack of cassettes and high storage capacities, this is one of the major features that justify hard disk drive camcorders.

Digital Pictures

The Everio MG130 does have a digital picture mode that allows you to use the camcorder to take photos.

Although it works excellent, and iPhoto on my Mac even automatically recognized it as a digital camera when I plugged it in, the resulting photos are almost useless at best.

Taking pictures at a laughingly low resolution (less then 1 megapixel) the resulting images are of little use except for perhaps email. Even the photos I took looked washed out and of generally poor quality.

Whatever you do, don't plan on using the MG130 as a primary (or even secondary, in my opinion) digital camera.

How JVC could lower themselves to even bothering to put such a pitiful digital camera feature on an otherwise very powerful camcorder is beyond me.

Edited video, the end result

I was pleasantly surprised at the results of the test movie that I made and subsequently burned to DVD. The quality of the original video was maintained through my conversion process and iMovie easily handled the entire process including adding a home menu, chapters, etc. The DVD played perfectly and the video showed no degradation.

However, in the end, the advantages of the HDD system (as mentioned above) versus MiniDV may be quickly lost upon many of those who find the necessary conversion and manual file handing unwieldy, or downright confusing.

Whereas a MiniDV cassette will import to many computer editing suites virtually by itself and them all the clips will appear ready for editing, the Everio HDD camcorders require that you do many of the intermediate steps manually before you can reach the same point.

Is it worth it? In the end, for me personally, yes.

For many others, the confusion associated with all the steps necessary to put the video onto a DVD has resulted in people simply returning these units, as I have noted from many frustrated fellow MG130 posts in many message forums, blogs, and technical support posts.

For those who opted to purchase the optional JVC Everio DVD recorder, the procss is simplified to only 2 steps - connect the burner, and push a button, however that convenience comes at a cost - $100 extra for the burner based on my local prices.

For the rest who want to do it manually, be prepared to struggle somewhat with the video format issues.

I am still befuddled why JVC decided to make the process so difficult - even sticking to a standardized "MPG" video format would solve the majority of the issues people are having, and surely result in happier consumers.

A little more user-friendliness yet (making the camera capable of generating DVD-ready file-sets, for example) could have made the Everio cameras even easier to use.

Sadly, they have made a number of poor choices when it comes to post-production file handling.

End Thoughts

The included battery is disappointing, lasting only approximately 60 to 80 minutes under typical use. If you use the built in light this life can be lower yet.

Again, JVC has decided to use a very proprietary battery which has caused problems with the aftermarket industry that has tried to bring higher capacity batteries to the market.

Fortunately it seems that aftermarket batteries are now available, but they require a special cable that be connected to the cameras "Charge" port. They mount to the standard battery mount location, but since the JVC firmware refuses to recognize them as being valid, they must bypass the firmware by supplying their power to the DC charge port instead. In the end, it fools the camcorder into thinking it's on AC power, when in reality, it's drawing power from an aftermarket battery.

This complication with aftermarket batteries is the result of protectionism on behalf of JVC to try to ensure that consumers are forced to buy only their own branded (and much more expensive) batteries. A chip in the genuine JVC batteries identifies the battery to the camcorder and enables their use, whereas the aftermarket batteries lack this chip and are thereby refused.

However, a quick look on eBay now reveals many long duration (and reasonably priced) alternatives that work around this problem.

Overall, the camera feels comfortable to hold, and is extremely light - a pleasure to handle and operate.

Will we keep this camera? Well, I'm still in within the allowable return period at the retailer I purchased this from, and I reserve the right yet to return it if I find (over the Christmas holidays) that the problems are more hassle then they are worth.

However, for my own personal uses, I don't think that this will happen. For others, your milage may vary.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 400
Recommended for: Trendsetters - Hip and Stylish Gadgets