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First HDD MPEG4 Video Camcorder

Posted by timothy on from the just-happy-to-see-you-dear dept.

An anonymous reader submits "This is a few weeks old but we have to talk about this. Samsung introduced the world first hard disk drive based camcorder so you don't have to buy those MiniDV, Hi8s, and DVD-Rs. You take pictures, play MP3s, PAL+NTSC video! The picture quality is 350K so not a replacement for digital camera. The downside is the HDD size is 1.5 Gig so you can record video just over an hour! Why can't these bozos let us put a 40gig 2.5 IDE drive and let us record continuously for 25+ hours! Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?"

3 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Hack it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure someone will figure a way to replace the internal drive with a larger one, as they did the first TiVo's.

  2. Re:MicroDrive by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is the IBM MicroDrive still around?

    yes they are.

    they have 2 problems....

    1 - horribly expensive.. I can buy a CF card of the same size for less than 1/2 the price of a microdrive.

    2 - horribly delicate.. pick up the microdrive and lightly pinch it... Oops.. it's dead now.

    we used to use microdrives here for some data recording... we went through 10 of them in 3 months.. while the CF cards dont fail.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Can't Hack it... by cioxx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm sure someone will figure a way to replace the internal drive with a larger one, as they did the first TiVo's.

    Samsung is not a hacker-friendly corporation like TiVo. If anything you'd get slapped with DMCA suit if you "upgrade" the drive.

    Also, I don't think this is a consumer-grade HDD. There is no mention of the type in the official press release, and arising out of the fact that none of the current HDD mfg's make anything near 1.5gb capacity drives, I'm willing to guess: this is a proprietary model.