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JVC First With A HD-Based Consumer Camcorder
kamesh writes "David Pogue writes in nytimes.com 'The days of storing computer data, music collections and Hollywood movies on spools of tape will soon be completely gone....JVC is the first company to see that particular light. Next month, it will release its new Everio GZ-MC100 and GZ-MC200.' Are tape based camcorders destined to die soon?"
Given that tapes are cheaper and more reliable then hard drives what are you looking for?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
"Are Tape-based camcorders going to die out soon"
I dont think so.
Hard drive based have a disadvantage as there is no way to increase the offered storage space( Though 300 mins of video in this particular product seems pretty good , but still if going for a vacation I may rather carry some extra tapes( which are quite cheap) than keep transferring the video to a computer.
Also hard disc based camcorders are known to be more fragile than tape based( as well as cd-rom and flash memory based)
JVC.COM is slashdotted!
You know, IPod became very successful with harddrives, how is this different? Except that the tape was cheap storage media (relatively cheap) so this may not become as ubiquitous as HDs in MP3 players, I mean people still use VHS tapes (I haven't used them in about 2 years though.)
I think tape is still good for backup storage and it is cheap, and it is easy to use and reuse, so it is not going away yet.
You can't handle the truth.
Uh. I hope not.
Tapes are the most reliable and versatile medium for massive data storage and even the tapes can't keep up with the demand.
On my home computer, I've got 500+ MB worth of results from simulations that I would like to back up but there's just no affordable way to do that.
And no, having the data on RAID-arrays or copying it onto spare hard drives is not "backing the data up".
The owls are not what they seem
" NO NO NO! MPEG2=COMPRESSED"
This is true. However, I would bet that a majority of "consumers" would love to have a hard-drive based camcorder that does a good job at compression without artifacts, because they just play the images back for other family members etc, and don't edit (like I'm assuming you do....)
Now, there's a perfect solution for everyone, and hopefully in the long term, they will remain at similar pricing points. However, if more people buy camcorders that can record 80 hours of Mpeg2 than those that buy tape or uncompressed solutions, then guess what they (the manufacturers) will make more of?
Also, I'm sure with a big enough hard drive, you could do uncompressed -- kind of like the higher end digital cameras. Obviously your time to record would go down, but again, a solution for everyone.
Karnal
I have video tapes that are 10-15 years old and many have a white mildew on them, most are otherwise bad now, they will ruin the heads of any VCR you put them in. Gone forever.
However, I have old full height hard drives from the 5160 days that I can fire up right now and pull data from 20 years later.
CD and DVD has shown's it's miserable failings, I've lost LOTS of CD's that were only a few years old.
It takes a damn long time for the platters in a hermetically sealed HDD to go bad when it's sitting unused in storage.
If they can get them smaller, cheaper and more reliable, I'm on board with this. I just hate to let go of the old ways. I guess some of us suffer the Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to what we've always used and have all our eggs in..
For over a grand, I'd expect more thought put into how a camcorder is actually USED.
Ha, ha! If this were true, you'd expect more games to be actually fun to play, or big-budget movies to be worth watching.
The problem with the consumer electronics industry, as in these other industries, is that they are trying to get you to BUY the damn thing. They don't care about what you do after that point, because most of the time the consumer isn't going to really know at the moment of deciding to buy, either.
So, instead they try to pump up or rachet down various specs in an attempt to try to fool the customer into thinking that these will translate into a better usage experience. Get some quick short-run profits and try not to worry about what's going to happen to the brand in the long term. Happy sailing!
$15,000 cameras have B&W viewfinders. Makes it easier to focus, actually.
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