Rating: 
Summary: This camera is not worth rating
Review: This camera is a piece of Junk. Battery was gone after 60 days. Spent 8 months trying to locate a battery. Now unit stays in unusable "Unit in Safeguard Mode". If anyone out there has an answer for this problem, please let me know. hosdoc@mynewroads.com
Rating: 
Summary: Mini only in size
Review: At this price I bought two - I bought a 5 hour battery from ebay and this tiny camera churns out great big video.I use it in school for making student produced videos - easy to work and fits the hand comfortably.
Rating: 
Summary: Good job for the price
Review: Crisp image, good sound. The SD pictures are also decent. Battery life has been good. Two months of use, so long term durability still an unknown. I live in a dry climate, so no humidity problems. So far, I have been very pleased with what this camera produces.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as the specs would lead, but good for the price
Review: For the price, I would say that the camera is worth it.
There's not much else to choose from in the price range. Pros:
Cheap, lightweight, small, 16x zoom. Cons:
Grainy, especially in low light, menus and features could
be better, still picture worthless. Details:
The video in low light is grainy. Even in bright outdoor
light the image shows grain. There are 3 gain options
-- none, AGC and Auto-A. Using none, there is little grain,
but colors are washed. AGC is unacceptably grainy, and
Auto-A is a little grainy, but colors are bright. I've been
shooting in Auto-A. Stills are not only noisy, but resolution is poor. I feel
the packaging is very misleading in this regard. The camera
advertises a 680k CCD and 1024x768 still resolution. The
1024x768 still image, according to the manual, is actually shot
in 720x480 resolution and interpolated upwards. That's actually
only using half the available CCD pixels. They should have
used the full 680k for the 1024x768 image. This pretty much
means you will get the best results using 640x480 mode and
interpolating yourself (interpolating 720x480 to 1024x768 is
lossy, and there are better enlarging methods than what they
use). The menus are too complicated for the features they control.
I would like to know how the arpature, shutter speed and gain
are being controlled, and control these myself for the best
image quality. The automatic settings for each of these don't
do the best job. It's also not easy to get to these settings
on the fly -- the single wheel control and menus are difficult
to traverse while shooting. The image stabilization works well in bright light. It doesn't
seem to work as well in Auto-A (auto arpature) setting for some
reason. This is a problem because Auto-A produces a better
image than AGC or no-gain. I'd like to use Auto-A and get
good image stabilization too. Night alive is almost useless. Basically it slows the shutter
speed way down to capture more light. When you use it you get
nothing but motion blur. I wish they had manual controls of the
shutter, arpature and gain because this would allow me to
produce a better nighttime image. I did use the Night Alive
setting to take a still photo in the dark using a tripod, and
this produces the least grain of any mode. Compared to the 30U and 90U models -- I'd almost recomend the
30U since the still quality of the 70u and 90u is not good.
The 90U has a larger LCD screen but the size of the 30u and
70u is good enough. The 90u comes with an 8mb memory card,
but if you are going to use the memory card, you will buy a
larger one anyways and end up not using the 8mb card. The
70u comes with a remote control which I will use (so I can
be in the video -- like at Christmastime) Wishlist:
1) Use the full CCD for stills.
2) Manual shutter speed (min currently is 1/60th, but if it
could be set to 1/30th this could vastly improve indoor
stills and video. 1/15th could work well for extreme dark
lighting.) Along this vein, an arpature and a shutter
priority mode would be nice.
3) Progressive scan video.
4) Direct access controls to arpature, shutter, and gain -
the menus are too difficult to fumble through and the
naming in the menus are not easy to figure out what they
do.
5) Titles and ***Date/Time*** capability on firewire capture.
6) Use full CCD for video capture -- this would disable the
stabilization, but could produce a brighter, more
accurate image.
Rating:
Summary: SD card issue
Review: I am happy with the camera but my experience was different from "An Electronics Fan" from Bend, Oregon. I tried to use the camera with a SanDisk 128mb SD card. I the resulting image looked like video noise. I thought the camera was defective, but a replacement unit showed the same result. I have since located a 32mb SD card, and the unit works fine with it. I am trying to find some 64mb cards, but it seems like retail stores are mostly carrying the larger capacity sizes. If you plan on making heavy use of the digital still capability, you might want to stock up on the lower capacity cards.
Rating:
Summary: SD card issue
Review: I am happy with the camera but my experience was different from "An Electronics Fan" from Bend, Oregon. I tried to use the camera with a SanDisk 128mb SD card. I the resulting image looked like video noise. I thought the camera was defective, but a replacement unit showed the same result. I have since located a 32mb SD card, and the unit works fine with it. I am trying to find some 64mb cards, but it seems like retail stores are mostly carrying the larger capacity sizes. If you plan on making heavy use of the digital still capability, you might want to stock up on the lower capacity cards.
Rating:
Summary: Camera is not any good.
Review: I am telling you people this camera was a waste of money. I urge you please consider a sony or some other brand. This camera has really nice features when they work. I keep getting this condensation message that comes up and will never go away. Also the tape always get stuck our and cannot automatically retract. This camera has went for service 3 times and THEY CANNOT FIX IT!!!!! Please condiser a sony. Dirt can record better video then this camera.
Rating:
Summary: Keep away from JVC DV
Review: I purchased this model in the June of 2003 and by May 2004 it is in Safeguard mode. I was extremely careful with it and used it a moderate amount. After researching in google a bit, I found hundreds of others complaining about the same problem not only for this camera but for other JVC models - some people are even organizing a class action lawsuit. The camera - without this problem, was decent, but I recommend getting a removable mic because all of my footage has recorded the camera whir - a problem you'll have with about any built in mic. I highly recommend staying away from JVC!
Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: JVC recommends using a 64mb SD or MMC memory card for this camcorder. Please note that a 64mb card with this camcorder will give you a little over 200 pics. JVC stated that any SD or MMC card that was bigger than 64mb may cause distortion and is not recommended. Well, that was a bit disturbing, considering that I had recenty purchased a PNY 256 mb SD card. (which I was half tempted to return) Regardless of the what I was told, I attempted the use of the PNY card. Sure enough, it worked fine. Pictures can be a bit grainy, but it is certainly not any worse than the 64 mb MMC card I tried. By the way, the PNY 256 mb SD card will take 818 pics.
Rating:
Summary: complete JVC garbage
Review: my name is kevin, and i am a 16 year old skateboarder. originally i asked for this camera to film skate videos of my friends and i skateboarding. for a while, it worked well, the resolution was excellent, it was easy to use, and everything seemed to work as it was supposed to. after about a half a year though, the camera gave me a humidity error report. i also noticed that many screws and bolts were loose and falling out. this was strange because i treated the camera well, and made sure everyone who handled it did so with care. but, i live in louisiana so i figured it was just the region. so, i got the camera fixed for what turned out to cost around 200 dollars. well, after only a month, the humidity report returned, but after placing it by a fan for 2 days, it resumed working. it is then that the top peice fell off. i put it back in, but lacked any screws to secure it. finally, a few weeks ago, the camera stopped working entirely. this camera has wasted enough of my time and money, i'm now moving to the higher quality panasonic models. i warn everyone who plans to use this camera on a regular basis DO NOT BUY JVC, especially this model. i would recomend the superior sonys or the also superior and more cost friendly panasonic models.
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