Small Companies Announcing Non Tape Ultra Budget Camcorders

In the past few weeks there have been many announcements by companies who have never before been in the camcorder market of flash based camcorders at ultra low prices. While these new models present brand new technologies, many in the industry are reluctant to call these new models true "camcorders" because of their low video quality and lack of features that define the typical camcorder. The new introduction includes models by Creative, Evergreen, Minox and Pantech & Curitel.

The new DiVi CAM 316 announced today by Creative records video to an SD card. This is Creative's first entry into the camcorder market. Creative is known for their audio products including a major competitor to the Apple iPod.

It is unlikely that Creative is manufacturing the major components for their camcorder; rather they are likely rebranding a product from an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). In fact, the likely explanation for the sudden burst of new camcorder "manufacturers" is a drop in price of the key components to make a flash based camcorder - all of which are likely provided by just one or two OEMs. Creative’s camcorder is available for just $150.

Evergreen, another company never before known in the camcorder market introduced the DN-DV610 around a week ago. The DN-DV610 records MPEG2 video to an SD card as well. The DN-DV610 also features MP3 playback capability and features a 2.0 in. LCD screen.

Minox, a popular digital camera manufacturer announced their MobiDV product last week. The MobiDV camcorder also records MPEG4 video to an SD card, however, it is only capable of recording video at 15 frames per second, half the rate of normal quality MiniDV video.

Pantech & Curitel, a company that is even less known than the others, today announced a camcorder-phone combination. The PH-L4000V phone records to Mini-MMC cards and includes a 10x optical zoom.

Besides their low prices, the other unifying factor of all these camcorders is that they use low cost CMOS chips. CMOS chips are much less expensive to produce than the CCD chips which have been used in camcorders for decades. However, CMOS chips are plagued with video quality and noise problems. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Sony announced a 3 chip CMOS camcorder which used a special processor to avoid these video quality problems; however, they explained that it was much different than the processors used in the "toy" cameras and camcorders which typically use CMOS chips.

Users should also not expect quality anywhere close to MiniDV, Digital8, DVD or MPEG2 camcorders with these MPEG4 ultra budget "camcorders." These models are incapable of recording the same amount of information as camcorders from the major manufacturers such as Sony, Canon, JVC, Panasonic and Samsung. Some in the camcorder industry have even expressed that they are worried that users will purchase these sub $200 camcorders thinking they can get the same quality as a normal, DV product, only to be incredibly disappointed.

The only non tape or DVD based camcorder which is comparable to the quality users typically expect from DV camcorders are the JVC Everio models. JVC's Everio camcorders come with a 4 GB Microdrive, however they can record to flash media like the ultra budget camcorders. The past Everio camcorders have produced very good video based on test from this publication. It appears from a leak today that JVC is pushing the quality of their Everio line even further with an introduction of a 3 CCD model.

The only major camcorder manufacturer which is in the ultra budget camcorder arena is Samsung. At CES Samsung announced the SC-X105L (Review, Specs, $349) which functions as a camcorder, camera and digital media device. However, the quality of the SC-X105L that was shown at CES what nowhere close to that of typical MiniDV camcorders.

It is likely that as more OEM camcorder parts become available their will be a flooding of the camcorder market — similar to what has happened in the digital camera market. If the quality of these products will ever come close to today’s DV standards however is unseen.