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CVS Disposable Camcorder Hacked

Posted by timothy on from the intentionally-left-blank dept.

ptorrone writes "We've been watching this on MAKE closely- and the king of the one-time digital camera hacks/analysis finally got his hands on a CVS Camcorder on Friday, the 24th via someone shipping him one FedEx. Within 18 hours, he had slurped the flash memory and has the unencrypted, XVID codec, 320x240, 30fps movies stored in the camera on his computer."

5 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Hours of crappy goodness by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If you don't hack the camcorder, you're paying $2 and change a minute to buy it, record 20 minutes, and have those 20 minutes put on DVD. Considering how many obvious artifacts were in the demo scene from the DVD, I am ready to boycott CVS just on principle. Charging that much money for such crap!

    Now the obvious answer is "hack the camcorder. Then it doesn't cost so much and you get more value for your money." Hmmmm... I can get a 16 ounce sh*t-flavored milkshake for $3, but with a little trick, I can turn that into a gallon. What a bargain, so long as I don't mind that it's still sh*t-flavored. If I want more sh*t-flavored goodness, then darn, I better learn the trick. If I want a milkshake that doesn't taste like sh*t, I think I'd better save my pennies.

    The ONLY reason I can think of getting this is to get a camcorder for your kid. If they break it, big deal.

    It also sort of reminds me of that old Mattell video camera that recorded grainy B&W on audio cassettes. Though crappy, it has its own kind of retro cool if you can find one now. Perhaps these cameras have value as collectors items.

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Hours of crappy goodness by Council · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Like this.

      Any other examples of too-damaging-for-a-real-camera photography?

      --
      xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
  2. The question is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...do they completely reformat the flash every time one of these is returning for processing. This could become a strange form of voyeurism.

  3. The blogging applications of this are endless. by CyricZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Such cameras will bring a new dimension to bloggery. The extreme portability of these cameras, often smaller than the smallest commercially available MP3 players, will allow people to document their everyday lives in a very visual way. It will take videobloggery to a new dimension: a teatherless webcam, of sorts.

    --
    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
  4. Re:Oh, the humanity. by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I figured someone would criticize me. You're seeing low-res version for slashdot - sorry, bandwidth trumps aesthetics today. Tomorrow the pretty pictures will go back up.

    Check the file sizes:
    -rw-r--r-- 38000 Jun 24 21:09 PICT0001-info.png
    -rw-r--r-- 13343 Jun 25 12:36 PICT0001-info.jpg
    -rw-r--r-- 10958 Jun 25 12:38 camcorder-icon-full.jpg
    -rw-r--r-- 2334 Jun 25 12:38 camcorder-icon.jpg
    -rw-r----- 4547 Jun 25 13:02 index.html
    -rw-r----- 23960 Jun 25 13:25 flash.html

    My low-res pictures are 13k vs 38k, and 2.3k vs 11k. Overall, loading flash.html is 40k instead of 73k. That means (roughly) 80% more visitors for the same bandwidth!

    I also tried GIF and TIFF - they were pretty close in size to the original PNG.

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    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets