$129 CAMCORDER IS THE FUTURE

By Mike Wendland
Published May 15, 2006

Now there are point-and-shoot video camcorders.

And I'm predicting they'll be as popular as digital cameras.

I've never seen anything as easy to use. There are no tapes to buy. No cables to fiddle with. Everything is recorded on a flash memory chip built into the camcorder.

The only things that need replacing are the AA batteries, after about an hour and a half or so of shooting.

From a company called Pure Digital and available nationwide at Target stores, the $129 little Point & Shoot Camcorder is about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It holds about 30 minutes of video and audio.

You can instantly review your work by hitting the play button, watching the videos on the 1.4-inch-square color screen built into the back of the device.

Don't like what you shot? Deleting a clip is as easy as it is on a digital still camera. Push the delete button.

A little red record button in the midst of a diamond-shaped navigation control nestled between the play and delete controls is how you start and stop the recording. Arrows surrounding the record button run a 2X digital zoom or go back or forward when playing video.

And that's it with the controls.

Plug and play.

But the coolest thing is on the side of the camcorder. Pull down a slide switch and out pops a USB connector. Plug that into your computer - no matter whether it's a PC or Macintosh - and built-in software runs automatically from the camcorder, letting you view, save and e-mail your clip.

It's absolutely seamless on a PC. Plug it in and you're presented with little thumbnails of the videos you recorded. You can play them on your PC or e-mail them to friends without having to open other applications.

On the Mac, it's a tad more complicated. You need to install a program from the camera to the Mac, then restart it to get the videos, which need to be converted into a different program to run with Apple's standard Quick Time application.

The company says it's working on a simpler process for Mac users but until that upgrade comes out, it's still relatively simple to use - just not as simple as it is on the PC.

Something else that you're going to like about this: If you've taken a whole sequence of video clips, you can watch them individually or assemble them all into a continuous movie, mixing the clips into whatever order you want.

How simple is that?

That said, the camcorder has some limitations. The video quality is not great, especially if you blow it up on a computer screen. Digital zoom results in pretty grainy shots.

The audio, if you're close to the microphone, tends to distort.

If you're outside, the little LCD viewfinder can be washed out by sunlight.

But all these little issues are outweighed by the convenience. For those casual users who don't like lugging around even a palm-sized camcorder and then figuring out how to get all those wires and cables connected to play the video back, this is a perfectly adequate substitute.

It does come with some RCA audio-video cables that let you plug into a TV and watch your work there.

And, as with digital still cameras, you can take the Point & Shoot Camcorder to any CVS Pharmacy, Rite-Aid, Ritz or Wolf Camera store and - for $10 - burn a DVD of your video right on the spot.

Other solutions
The chief competition for the Point & Shoot Camcorder is from a growing number of sophisticated cell phones like the Treo 700 that also include video recorders.

Overall, I'd say the image quality is about the same. But cell phone video recorders demand a lot of media storage capacity that requires the user to buy an optional card.

Besides, getting video out of a cell phone to be viewed on different devices is always a pain.

That built-in USB connection with the Point & Shoot makes it a breakthrough device. Small enough for purse or pocket, it makes everyone a movie director.

Read MIKE WENDLAND's blog at www.freep.com/pcmike . You can reach him at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@freepress.com.