Sony Switzerland Quietly Announces the DCR-TRV950E, Replacing the Popular DCR-TRV900

by Robin Liss
Published on Mar 20, 2002 12:00 AM



Confirming a rumor we ran on March 4th, Sony Switzerland quietly announced the DCR-TRV950E, a replacement for the popular DCR-TRV900 on March 19th at a press conference at the Sony headquarters. A very reliable source in Switzerland who prefers to remain anonymous sent us this news with many details on the camcorder.

We have almost every detail on the new camcorder which replaces the very popular DCR-TRV900. The DCR-TRV900 has been out for three years, but still remains one of the most popular three chip camcorders out there. This release is arguably the most anticipated camcorder announcement releases since the VX2000.

The DCR-TRV950E is the European version of this new camcorder, which will almost certainly be released in the U.S. with similar specs a few months after it is released in Europe. The camcorder has three, Mega Pixel (1,070,000) CCDs. No other three CCD camcorder on the market today has CCDs at such high of a resolution. This is really a revolutionary, ground breaking step in camcorder development. The camcorder includes a 12x optical zoom.

For digital stills the camcorder includes a Memory Stick slot and can save stills at a maximum resolution of 1152 x 864 pixels. The camcorder has a USB slot for transferring stills from the camcorder to the PC. The camcorder also has a built in flash and an intelligent accessory shoe.

The camcorder includes the new MPEG-X feature. Previously, there were recording limits on the number of seconds of video that could be recorded in MPEG format to the Memory Stick, however the MPEG-X feature allows for unlimited (up to the Memory Stick's capacity) recording of video. Sony did not specify what resolution the MPEG videos were recorded to the Memory Stick at.

As for other enhancements, the camcorder now has Bluetooth capability, similar to that includes on the DCR-PC120BT and other new Sony models. The Bluetooth wireless connection allows the camcorder to connect to other Bluetooth devices, and when used in conjunction with a Bluetooth enabled phone or the normal, land line phone adapter the camcorder can surf the web and send and receive email with both still and MPEG video attachments. The camcorder also includes the USB streaming feature which has been added to other new Sony camcorders. The USB streaming feature makes it easy to use the camcorder as a web cam via the USB port.

The camcorder also includes playback zoom, the ability to zoom in on parts of a video during playback. The camcorder has 6-hours of continuous recording capability using a new battery type NP-QM91. Currently we don't have any details on the new battery type however. The camcorder includes DV in/out and all the standard connections. The camcorder also includes hologram autofocus, a more accurate autofocus that is able to zero in on difficult, low light and low contrast objects. To our knowledge, hologram auto focus has not been included on any Sony camcorders yet, however it has been included on Mavica digital still cameras.

The camcorder has a reported price of 5000 Swiss Franks which is about $3,019.69 U.S. Dollars. We don't know for a fact but this is most likely the manufacturer's suggested retail price and not the actual price that the camcorder will sell at, because it is particularly high. The camcorder is expected to be released in June of 2002.