Anyone know about DVD players?

[Peter J]

Hello,

I want to buy a camcorder that records in HD on to a miniDVD. I've got an HD telly and I assume I will have to buy an HD DVD player.

Can I take the miniDVD out of the camera and straight in to the DVD player to view what I have recorded? In the olden days I had a camcorder that used mini tapes and you could put the mini tape cassette in to a sort of bigger cassette and put that in the video to play it back. Is it the same sort of thing with miniDVD?

[Biggles]

Hi Pete,

Wouldn't you be better looking at something that records to its own built in hard drive. You can just plug it in to your telly to watch straight away or download to your PC and edit away.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04...6ek_camcorder/

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcor...D-Camcorder/p1

http://www.simplydv.co.uk/

[Andy Moore]

You will be able to plug your camcorder directly into your TV with the supplied lead.

If it comes with a little remote, its just a case of sitting back, selecting the right channel input on the TV, and use the remote to play/stop/FF/Rewind the camcorder.

Easiest way.

[Lostboy]

And remember that whilst everything may be HD compatible if you haven't connected it with the right leads then you'll only be watching a standard format picture anyway!

[jwalker]

Originally Posted by Peter J

Can I take the miniDVD out of the camera and straight in to the DVD player to view what I have recorded?

Dunno about HD stuff but a small CD will play in most DVD players. There is usually a recess in the CD tray for locating it. It can probably be read by your computer too.

[v666]

I have a miniDVD camcorder. It is very easy and fast to get the movie onto the PC, it just goes across in a MPEG format (may be under a different extension though, but still MPEG compatible), so can be easily put onto VCD, SVCD, or DVD. Some DVD player will play the disc directly but not all. Once plugged into the PC the Camcorder works just like an external drive.
One draw back is the disc size, they only hold about 20-30 mins at a reasonable quality.

If I was buying another now I would look at the Hard disc or Memory card ones. Just not sure if the technology is quite there yet as they are relatively new.
Benefits of memory card ones would be the ever decreasing cost and expanding size of the cards. They can be carried easily for more storage and should be able to be read by a card reader very quickly and easily.

Tim

[Tony]

The Gadget show reviewed the new Sony HD Camcorder with still pix capabilities..looks good.

[Peter J]

Originally Posted by Biggles

Hi Pete,

Wouldn't you be better looking at something that records to its own built in hard drive. You can just plug it in to your telly to watch straight away or download to your PC and edit away.

Well, therein lies the problem. You are probably right but I really want to film something (wedding, christening, holiday, whatever) and then just leave it on the disc, put the disc in a case, write on the case what it is and put it in a rack so that years afterwards I can thumb through the rack and say "oh look the video I took of the ribnet trip to folly 2009" lets watch that again.

[Biggles]

I do see your point.

But who knows the way things change you might not have anything to play that DVD on in years to come. Also no one guarantees that DVD disks last for ever. So you should do a backup anyway. Nothings ever simple. But its amazing how many people never back up anything and then spend a fortune on trying to retrieve data from broken hard disks or other formats.

Best of luck with your choice. Whichever you go for.

I need to get a new camcorder but I keep putting it off because taking it on the boat kills it. Even if it doesn't get wet the salty atmosphere seems to do strage things to them. Now I just use my stills camera in video mode. Does a good enough job to watch on a PC.