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Jazz HDV178 High Definition Camcorder

Jazz HDV178 High Definition Camcorder
Overall Rating: Product Rating: 5.0
Lowest Price: $129.99
at eBay

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An amazing little camera for an Amazing price

Written: Sep 20 '08 (Updated Sep 20 '08)

Product Rating: Product Rating: 5.0
Ease of Use:  
Durability:  
Battery Life:  
Movie Quality:  
Pros: Small Wel built Amazing quality video for an amazing price

Cons: Proprietary charger, Oddball format video Can't survive 200mph crash :-)

The Bottom Line: Overall an impressive camera for the price with the capacity to permit otherwise impractical video capture!
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nerys71's Full Review: Jazz HDV178 High Definition Camcorder
WOW. I could probably just finish this review with that word WOW.

But I love the details!

I was stalking around walmart looking for goodies and I noticed this "HD" camera on the rack for $99. Huh HD for $99. I felt my pocket for my Sanyo HD1 that I paid $700 for :-)

The return policy is good so I figured why not see what its like. Maybe I can fly it (more on that later)

Its your normal cheapy camera but this one is not quite the same. It has a better "feel" to it. I mean you know your holding a cheap camera but it lacks that "crap" feeling it actually feels pretty good.

Shot some video Some pictures etc.. Screen folds back on itself (bonus looking more flight ready every second)

STANDARD battery! Yippee! I can get these batteries a dime a dozen on ebay!

Ok the camera is great for the price but whats the VIDEO like. It looks stellar and I mean stellar on the screen but its a less than 3 inch screen not a good test.

I pop the SD card into the computer and Grr its H264 video. Got to hunt some drivers no joy finally fined the FFDSHOW on the Disk that came with it Bingo plays fine.

WOW. thats the first time I said WOW outloud while messing with this camera. I was looking at extraordinarily respectable 1280x720 30fps decent bitrate video on my screen from a $99 camera!!!

I have to say I was truly impressed. Professional video? not a chance. FAR better than your average consumer $500-$1200 DV camcorder? You bet your butt it is.

Even the lowlight performance was pretty impressive! Not great and its grainy but still more usable than a lot of DV Camcorder video under the same conditions. In Bright daylight conditions the video is simply spectacular for the price.

I off course spent the next 3 hours assembly a booster to take this thing a thousand feet into the air. I just had to get some onboard video in HD :-)

I flew it the next day. When I recovered the rocket (less than 20 inches from a river!!!) I was walking back to the launch site and I played back the video.

WOW I said it again. the video was simply stunning! if you goto www.naramlive.com First that picture of the rocket on fire. Thats my rebuilt camera booster with this camera inside YES it survived that fire :-) (no it did not survive the 200mph prang the day before I had to go buy another one and did so with pleasure)

goto the naramlive button and then goto thursday and then goto Videos. The F20-4 and the Mohave Green videos are with this camera. These are Divx files the extra pixelation is the conversion the originals do not have this problem. They are big both over 40mb so be warned.

I am simply at a loss for words at times for the quality of this camera when compared to what you pay for it.

I plan to strap this to my head and ride some roller coasters. How about Sky Diving with one of these strapped to yoru head. I am even looking into building a water proof shell for it so I can go diving with it.

Its light enough to strap to a larger RC airplane. Attach to a kite. RC CAR Boat. The potential for such high quality video on such a small budget is just endless.

Its pretty small. No bigger than 2 ipods stacked. Nice rubber grips to give it a good feel. Pan Wiggle is pretty minimized though it is present if you vibrate it hard enough (say on a gas powered RC car)

It will support SDHC cards (took my 4gb and 8gb card fine) though I tend to stick with 1gb cards since I do "destructive" things with the camera.

On the one flight pilot error I forgot the ejection charge. Straight up Flip Straight down from 800-900 feet. Hit the ground at least 200mph. Needless to say the camera did NOT survive this but the battery and memory card DID survive though no video.

Apparently until you hit "stop" it never actually writes a valid "toc" for the recording IE interrupt the recording and you get no recording so strap that battery in good :-)

OK onto the bad stuff.

For what I use it for there is almost nothing bad about this camera except the lack of toc write till completion from a hardware perspective. In fact the following negatives would be BAD for my usage :-)

No zoom. It does zoom and when used slightly its not bad but its digital IE ignore it.

Charging. OK warning here. Absolutely positively DO NOT lose the charger that comes with this. IT WILL NOT charge from USB (even though it acts like it is) and it will NOT charge from anything "except" the special charger it comes with even though its a standard mini A usb port. I have no idea. why its proprietary inside somehow.

The good news is that its a standard NP60 battery. so you can get extra batteries and more importantly EXTERNAL CHARGERS for said batteries on ebay for cheap. $12 will get you another battery and a charger. nice.

They have a $50 more expensive model that does the same thing the HDV189 but the only thing it has is a larger screen. For my use thats bad (more mass) and it also will not "fold flat" in reverse. If you close it normally the camera shuts off so I need to be able to close it in reverse so I can mount it to my helmets rockets etc..

If your never going to do these kinds of oddball things with it the more expensive model might be worth the larger screen. I think not though stick with the sweet $99 price tag model :-)

Ok some negatives software side.

The video is "odd" its non standard in some way. I can not easily "edit" the video without transcoding. IE normally you can "cut" a segment out of the video without "re recording" it lowering its quality.

This video has issues. I can edit the "end" of the video but I can not edit the beginning of the video. I am hoping a hack will come out to fix this. When I try to edit the beginning of the video without re recording I get a black blank video thats corrupt.

Because the video is such high resolution the files are huge. When I fly in a rocket it could sit on the pad for several minutes before it launches. I do not need this portion of the video. Same after it lands. The entire video is 295mb the Launch itself is 43mg You can see why I desire to edit the video to get the desired 43mb chunk out.

For the average user who just wants to convert this to DVD this will be less of an issue. Just convert to DVD first THEN "cut" the video. Or just use the included software.

Once you get past these relatively minor problems the camera is a joy to use. It lacks many features but thats ok. I want it for a simple task and it performs that task with gusto.

although I have not used it the camera also has an HDMI out port. This will allow you to directly connect it to an HDTV (it also comes with standard def cables)

If you want to play around with some VERY usable High Definition video on a budget definately go out to walmart right now and pick up one of these little gems.

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 99
Recommended for: Budget Buyers - Best Values to Fit the Budget
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nerys71

Epinions.com ID:
nerys71
Member: Chris Taylor Jr.
Location: Edgely, PA
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
I Love Rockets, Airplanes, and off course Gadgets :-)

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