Sony, please explain.... (camcorder)

[cmykrgb]

Sony is releasing their hard drive based HD camcorder (HDR-SR1) next month. This thing has a 30GB HDD.

You know, this would just fit perfectly on a Dual Layer HD DVD-R disc.


Some people at Sony just needs to get fired!

[phranctoast]

ill help with that explanation.

Sony does not support hd dvd.

[vick vega]

I think he is saying that they should have made it 50 gig.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Sony is too big a company to effectively communicate across all division, but I definitely understand your point.

[georgir]

that capacity indeed seems like too low
but it matching the dl hddvd and not any bd is just coincidence, and not important. you can view it as a singlelayer bd, plus 5 gigs "spare" for retakes, etc... after all, people will most often edit their footage before burning to a videodisc, so we can assume some 5gb get cut out or they'll be recording several sessions and transferring to pc before making their 100gb bd disc

still, larger capacity camcorders should follow soon. we already have 160gb laptop drives after all

[takezo]

How much data would a 8cm dual layer mini BD-R have any way? 16GB? If it's to record HD videos, then it's the same as a standard DVD camcorder in recording length.

A 30gb HDD would give you twice the space, in a smaller package. Since Apple can fit 60gb HDDs on their IPOD, I bet that Sony HD camcorder with 30gb HDD will be small and sleak compared to conventional optical disk based camcorders.

[Shadowself]

Look at the size of the thing. It almost assuredly does not have a laptop size (physical size, not data retention size) hard drive.

The HDD in this is almost certainly the same physical size as is in current MP3 players. To my knowledge there are no drives shipping in that physical size which have a data capacity of 50 GB. I know of 5, 8, 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 and 80, but not of any 50. Additionally, the 30 GB drive appears to be the most commonly shipped HDD for MP3 players. That could quite possibly be because it has the lowest cost per GB of any of these drives. (Note that the DCR-SR80 has a 60 GB HDD.)

My objection to this camera, and Sony's marketing of it, is that Sony has the audacity to put a "Full HD 1080" icon on this page. However, the specs rather clearly state it shoots in not 1080x1920 but 807x1434 in 9:16 mode and 807x1076 in 3:4 mode. The camera does not have the capacity to shoot in true 1080!

I have seen way too many announcements on "pro-sumer" and consumer cameras which claim to be true HD which are not. Sony is not the only company to do this. There have been several announcements by various vendors over the last two years of cameras claiming to be true HD when in fact they cannot shoot either 720x1280 or 1080x1920 versions.

If you want to take Sony to task on this camera, take them to task on this.