Rating: 
Summary: USB streaming / Firewire
Review: This camera works just fine; and despite having a few too many bells and whistles for my taste, the picture is as good as my trusty eight year old Sony camcorder that died last summer. BUT!!!... Be aware that the USB streaming capability that is touted as a selling point is absolutely useless. The USB's connection is slow enough that it's impossible to get anything other than jerky, dark, over-compressed video with tons of dropped frames and terrible sound.
The SOLUTION though, is simple if you have a reasonably new computer with plenty of muscle: ... I picked up an i.link / FireWire card with a video rendering chipset built in that gives me the decent quality video for burning VCD's that I expected. USB bad. FireWire good, camera good. 'Nuf said.
Rating: 
Summary: An amazing little camera!
Review: This is an extremely versatile bit of technology, with a lot of very clever features. It's backward compatible with Hi-8, and has a useful digital pass-through capability that makes it invaluable in editing other video sources.I simply don't understand the complaints regarding battery life, tape loading, or low light performance. At this price point, and considering the competition, Sony is way ahead of the game. Two suggestion for all users: 1) Spring [$$$] for a UV or skylight filter to spare the lens. 2) Spend [$$$] for a Firewire card to take advantage of the i-Link port. You can edit video like a pro, record it back onto Digital 8, or even push it back out to any VCR. If you want to be a professional, get a professional camera, for about [$$$]. If you want to have fun, get this camera and spend the rest on a vacation to try it out!
Rating: 
Summary: Unless you only shoot outdoors, avoid this camcorder...
Review: This is the 3rd camcorder I've owned, and it's my second Sony... I purchased this camcorder and returned it within a day. The first shots I filmed were in the sunlight. Picture quality was bright, vivid, and sharp with great detail and skin tone. BUT, I made the mistake of next shooting video of my baby inside my apartment and that's all it took to ruin my day... I tried every manual exposure setting, and every AE option, with varying degrees of suck as the result. Here's the setup: My living room is connected to my dining room, so I had 2 dining room lights (70 watts each) and two living room lights (70 watts each) going. In other words, standard indoor lighting. The quality took a TREMENDOUS dive, regardless of the camera setting, when shooting in this indoor environment. Colors became muted to the point of almost looking greyish, skin tones took on a whitish-grey death tint, grain and color noise was dramatically increased... in other words, this camera is worthless for indoor shooting. The image looked like an old overexposed, color-devoid photo with poor detail, worse color, and flat-out ugly results. Sure, you could fork out the [money] for an add-on light and get better quality results, but there's nothing candid about shooting video in an apartment when the subject has a bright light beaming into their eyes making them squint. For comparison sake, I also have a Sony CCD-TRV43 Hi8 analog camcorder. The results are night and day when compared to this Sony digital (DCRTRV240). Put simply, the analog camera performs WONDERFULLY under the same lighting conditions. What sold me on the camera was the features and digital effects. They're cool. The analog input option to run other video through the camera and into the computer is great. But features don't help you much when the video you actually SHOOT with the camera doesn't look good. The bottom line is that the video you shoot with this camera simply looks bad. I showed the results to 4 different people and they all grimaced when they saw it. Don't buy this camera. Maybe it'll force Sony to finally deal with such an obviously inherent problem with their digital cameras (read other reviews by customers of this and other cameras in the same Sony line and it's a reoccuring theme.) Either that or it'll force them to start being honest with consumers about what I've come to find and regard as the dirty little secret of digital camcorders under $1,200: they simply do not look good in low light environments. I'm reading that about the Canon models, the JVC models and the Panasonic models as well. Nobody, other than angry customers like me who feel like they've been had, is talking about it. That's just plain shifty.
Rating: 
Summary: USB connection total garbage
Review: whoefully disapointed with the quality of the video coming from the usb connection. the analogue outs are much much better. so here we have a situation where the analogue is better than the digital out. plan on buying a video capture card in order to get decent video to your pc.
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