Sony DCRTRV460 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder

Rating:
Summary: Great Camcorder!!!
Review: I've had this camcorder for only 3 days but I played with it alot.

PROS:
- Easy to use touch screen
- Image Quality
- 20X Zoom
- Image stabilizer (Steadyshot) that actually works
- USB Streaming, easy to use and your camcorder can act as a webcam!
- Night Shot and Super night shot
- View finder with focus control
- Image and sound Quality

CONS:
- Software... it's plain bad!!!
- Batteries are expensive!!!!!
- No memory stick provided
- No battery charger provided (have to put the battery on the cam and let it charge for ~1h45)


First of all the software... man is it bad... I couldn't figure how that thing works since it's so "dumbed down". I think it was designed for a 3 years old. I uninstalled it after 5 minutes then I had to reinstall the drivers from the drivers directory on the CD. The USB streaming is pretty good and you can use it as a webcam and microphone. I haven't tried it with the memory stick yet. I replaced the software with Cyberlink PowerVCRII (great with the USB Streaming) and Ulead VideoStudio (using the firwire connection when you fast forward, stop, pause, play etc... it will actually control the camcorder so you don't have to fiddle with it at all to capture your films).

The Touch screen LCD is working great and you can personalize your menus too! So you can add shortcuts to your favorite options like Digital Zoom, digital effect, wide screen etc... that's a great idea from Sony! The menus are pretty straight forward so even without reading the 134 pages of the manual you can use the cam easily.

The 20X zoom is a beauty and will get those small details without any image quality. You can enable the Digital Zoom up to 40X or the full 990X. For the first 40X the image is still details but after that the quality is going down pretty fast! if you require a better zoom better get a telephoto lense.

The Steadyshot on this cam is good! It will get rid of the small movements your hand will go when recording. Turn it off and you'll see all the small vibrations.

The night shot and super night shot are working good but the super night shot seems to be "software driven" because the image is a little choppy (so are some of the digital effects...). The image is clear and even through the "greenish" image you'll still see some colors.

If you're wearing glasses you'll be ok with this viewfinder as you can adjust the focus! With the NPFM-30 battery you're better use the viewfinder if you want to keep recording as the LCD is ~30% more "power hug"

The image and sound quality are just great... nothing bad to say! The microphone is sensitive and will keep most of the frequencies... even the deep sound of a Harley-Davidson with straight pipes will sound good on a home theater.

Rating:
Summary: sony trv 460
Review: Ihave been using this new sony model for just a few weeks but think it delivers quite a lot for the price. it is very compact,making it easy to slip into a backpack or small carrying case. the supplied battery does require careful monitoring, and i am thinking of getting a bigger model. takes a decent-- not great-- digital picture on its memory stick, so it can double as a digital camera too if you want to travel light. the specifications contain an odd error as it does have a built in light, although the specs say it does not.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect transition camcorder
Review: My old 8mm camcorder died around Thanksgiving leaving me with 15 years worth of home movies and no way to view them. The TRV460 was at a great price point and perfectly bridges the gulf between analog and digital. I wanted to transfer the keepers stuff to DVDs and edit the really good stuff in to movies. I'm far from done, but I've worked with this camcorder enough to pass on some tips.

CAMCORDER: Easy to use. Pictures are so much sharper than my analog camera (I know, no surprise here, but it had a wow factor for me). The camera is smaller than my old one, a little bigger than my two hands wrapped together. The touchscreen is easy to use - plan on studying the manual though. It's all in there and it's easy to read, but you have to approach it like a text book. It powers up quickly. Two things to beware of -- (1) the tape inserts through the bottom and this that if you use a screw tripod adapter you have to take it off the to insert a tape, (2) there are some features that only work on movies recorded to DV tape vs. recording straight to the memorystick - for example when you record to the memory stick it only records in mono.

SOFTWARE: Other reviews are correct when they pan the software that comes with the camera. I bought Adobe Premiere Elements and it is great. I bought the adobe software from amazon - they were offering a Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements combo that I opted for after reading numerous reviews. I've used the full version of photoshop for years and the user interface of elements is dumbed-down but still has a familiar touch and enough features to do everything I want. Wait a minute - this is a camcorder review, sorry for the tangent.

FIREWIRE/USB2.0: Elements will capture movies recorded to the memorystick via the USB2.0, but to do the same for movies recorded to tape you need a firewire cable. If your PC does not have a firewire port, you can just add a PCI firewire/usb2.0 card onto your motherboard (costs less than $20 for the card). I had bought the card at retail a year ago. But camcorders need a firewire cable with a 6 pin to 4 pin configuration. Found one on line recently (listing: 6ft IEEE 1394 FireWire Cable 6pin-4 DV ILINK IPOD SONY) for less than a buck. Once you plug the firewire cable into the TRV460, you control the camera from the computer through the premiere software - no special settings or adjustments needed. By the way, you can do some camcorder to PC transfers using the USB2.0 cable and the Sony Picture Package software - but "clunky" is too kind.

Along with the camcorder, there are some necessary accessories. I looked for low-cost options on all of these and was pretty successful. I'll pass them on here - for what they're worth.

DIGITAL TAPES: Sony makes many different types of tapes that are good for recording digital. The Sony Digital8 Camcorder Tapes (at first I thought these were the only ones that would work) costs $20 a pair at retail. There are many other 8mm tapes that are compatible for less than half this cost (check out Sony's website for compatibility).

MEMORY STICK: Again I went online to find a good price on a memory stick. But the stick I bought was not compatible with this camcorder (listing: SanDisk 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo Sony 256 MB DSC-T1 +). The camcorder would only intermittently recognize the stick (mostly it wouldn't). Searches on the web showed that many people had this problem. The kind customer service dept at SanDisk agreed to check it out and said they would probably replace it. They did and the newer version of the same memorystick works fine. While I was waiting I bought a Sony 256MB memory stick at a retail store and, of course, it works fine. I got a memory card reader to plug into my USB port (listing: USB MS/MEMORY STICK CARD READER) so I could transfer movies to the PC without involving the camcorder.

ANALOG TAPE TO MEMBORY STICK TRANSFER: One cool thing I learned about the camera is you can copy scenes from an analog tape to the memory stick all from within the camcorder. With the touch screen monitor, it is very easy to do. This is great if you want to compile selected scenes (from the huge pile of old 8mm tapes) without sitting at the computer. I did a lot of this analog tape-to-memorystick xfer (using just the camera) while sitting around the fire with my family - it made me a little more sociable with the family than if I were staring at the computer.

BATTERY: Another reviewer posted some tips on non-Sony batteries. I took an even cheaper approach that worked great. On line I bought a charger (listing: CHARGER for SONY NP-F550 NP-FM50 NP-QM71 QM91 BATTERY) for less than a fiver and a high capacity battery (listing: SONY NP-QM71 NP-FM70 DCR-TRV950 2800mAh BATTERY NEW) for less than fifteen bucks.

So that's it. I feel like the only splurge was on the tape editing software. I could have stayed with the free Sony Picture Package - but the Adobe is so much easier and does tons more. If you amortize it over the hours you spend on editing, the $100 bucks or so is not that much.

My PC is a off-brand clone with a AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU running at 2.07 MHz, wtih 512MB ram, running XP Home Edition SP2 and a ATI AIW 8500DV videocard. I like this camcorder a lot!

Rating:
Summary: Great Quality Picture
Review: Purchased this camcorder about a week ago. Ease of operation and a great operators manual help sort out technical items. Picture quality utilizing only standard grade 8mm tape is excellent. I can only imagine the more expensive metal particle or metal evaporated tapes may have even higher quality pictures. Have not had time to check out the camera picture quality using the memory stick. I do not expect any disappointments. Sony make a terrific camcorder product. Consumers reports recommends this as one of their "Best Buys" for digital camcorders. Sony & Panasonic both continually excell in the catagory as "Models requiring the least amount of repairs" or "Most trouble-free manufacturers". The battery that comes with the unit gives approximately 67 minutes of recording time on a normal charge. A full charge will give approximately 74 minutes. Recommend purchasing the FM-50 battery for extended recording/playing time and for nothing else, simply to have a back-up. I own a DVD recorder that allows me to transfer audio & video from my camcorder to DVD's . The camcorder has an A/V output for the consumer interested in transfering their home movies/digital images to DVD's. It also features an S-Video output for capturing even higher quality video.

Some of the bad things:

- The camcorder does not come with a portable/cordless charger. You have to plug the batteries into the camcorder and plug the adapter/charger into the camcorder to charge. Purchase an additional external charger for simplicity.

- The camcorder does not come supplied with a memory stick. Consider purchasing at least 128 M. That way you can get approximately 80 minutes of recording time.

- The battery supplied FM-30 (see above) is not adequate.

Some of the good things:

- Quality product

- Image & sound quality excellent

- Auto focus & stabilization also excellent

- Great zoom feature

All in all, a fantastic product with great performance and features at a very reasonable price. If you want to get into digital video recording for less that $ 500.00, try this one.

GAC

Rating:
Summary: Great First Camcorder
Review: Referred to by some salesmen as a "dinosaur" this 1.5-pound marvel is a great beginner's camcorder with an easy to read and follow owner's manual. With the unit's "Easy" button, everything becomes automatic and the first movies are really great. The 2.5-inch LCD touch screen contains all the menus for setting up the camera, instead of numerous mechanical buttons. The camera has 4 methods of video transfer: An A/V cable that will plug directly in to a VCR or the front panel of your TV for viewing directly from the camera, "S" video transfer, USB and Firewire. I highly recommend using a firewire port as the preferred method of video transfer into your PC as the USB transfer has too many frame dropouts, resulting in jerky video. The still picture resolution is around 1 mega pixel (MP) and is stored on a memory stick, so if you currently use a digital still camera at 2 MP or above, you might be a bit disappointed. The viewfinder has it's own focus adjustment which is really good if you wear glasses. Some hints-Don't bother to purchase a separate battery charger if you purchase a spare battery, the camera does a fine job of charging the battery and the charge indicator light goes out after a full charge. A 64MB memory stick will store 980 pictures at standard resolution and 390 at fine resolution so resist the temptation to go with a more expensive 128 MB or larger stick. One last note, Windows XP along with Windows Movie Maker V2.0 (which is free from Microsoft) has the capability to capture and edit the video from this camera.

Rating:
Summary: Love the Night Shot!
Review: The biggest reason we purchased this camcorder was for the night-shot. The resolution with the night shot is a bit grainy (which is expected with infrared) and has a mostly green overtone, but the night-shot plus has a color enhancer that works really well. Not vivid colors like you would get in the daylight but it's really neat for infrared. You can take pictures in pitch darkness. Just remember, with infrared pictures, your eyes will show up as a creepy zombie-like black!
I can't say anything about Sony customer service because we haven't had to deal with them in the last year that we've owned this camcorder. Great product!

Rating:
Summary: Poor service by Sony
Review: The camera has been fine, but Sony's service is very, very bad, enough that I would not recommend you purchase this or any other Sony product. When I got the camera, I installed the software that came with it. My computer crashed some months later, and I couldn't find the CD. I couldn't find where to download the support software on the website, and contacted Sony. Bottom line.... you have to buy it for $62.95. This is just profoundly bad service, and completely non-standard in the industry.

I've always liked Sony products, but I'm done!

Rating:
Summary: GREAT CAMCORDER
Review: This camcorder is great! Its touch screen display is easy, battery life is great and the price isn't all that bad.

Rating:
Summary: WARNING ABOUT 8 MM BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY
Review: This seems like a nice camera but be forewarned if you are buying it for its backward compatibility to older 8MM and Hi8 tapes. I bought the previous model the TRV350 and found that my Hi8 tapes recorded on a Canon Hi8 camcorder would not play properly on this camera. I took my tape to a store and had them try it in the TRV460 and the same thing, sound worked but a blue screen for picture. I called Sony and they said they couldn't guarantee that any older 8MM media would be 100% compatible. I don't think you see that anywhere in their literature. Buy it for its other features but if you want it to be able to play older 8MM you should bring in one of your old tapes and try it in the store first. Good luck.