Sony Releases New Camcorders: DCR-TRV18, DCR-TRV25, DCR-TRV27, DCR-TRV50

The first new camcorder is the Sony DCR-TRV18, an upgrade from the DCR-TRV17. The camcorder includes a Carl Zeiss lens, a 2.5 in. LCD and a Memory Stick with an included 8MB Memory Stick. The camcorder does not include a megapixel CCD as all of the other new models do. Sony has taken note from an old Sharp camcorder that created a lot of buzz with a touch focus system. Now, all the LCD panels are touch sensitive. Using the touch focus system a user can focus an object in an image by just touching that object on the LCD screen. This feature is available on the TRV18 and all the other new camcorders.

With the new Digital8 camcorders that Sony announced at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Sony included USB video streaming capabilities. Sony has added this feature to all four of the new camcorders. By using the USB port on their camcorder, users can now hook their camcorder up to their computer through their USB port (completely independent of any FireWire card) and stream live video over the web using Microsoft Net Meeting. Users can stream tapes of live video right from the camcorder either in a videoconference, video phone call or live streamed broadcast. Lately, many users have been asking how they can use their camcorder as a web cam to do streaming video and this latest addition seems to fit that need.

Sony also added color night shot to the Digital8 camcorders at CES and they have included color night shot on the four new MiniDV models. The new color night shot feature allows the camcorder to shoot color video (it used to be all green) in complete darkness. Color night shot is available on all four models.

A third feature which was added to the top Digital8 camcorders and now is included on all four of the MiniDV camcorders is Sony's MPEG MovieX feature, which allows the user to record long length video onto Memory Stick media, whereas you were recently limited to short, 60 second clips. Now you can fill up a whole Memory Stick with MPEG video and transfer it to your computer for editing.

Sony has upgraded the DCR-TRV20, leaving just one, non mega pixel CCD camcorder (The TRV18). The biggest improvement between the new Sony DCR-TRV25 and the older TRV20 is the upgrade to a MegaPixel CCD. The Sony DCR-TRV25 has all the above features but with a MegaPixel CCD for higher still quality. It captures at 520 lines of horizontal video resolution (I think we can assume, although Sony didn't say, that the TRV17 shoots at 500 lines of resolution) and can capture stills at 1,152 x 864 pixels. The camcorder has a 2.5 in. LCD. Sony has said that the DCR-TRV25 will be available in April for about $900.

The TRV27 is effectively the TRV25 but with a 3.5 in LCD. The DCR-TRV27 will be available in April for about $1,000. Previously the TRV20 had a 3.5 in. LCD. In some ways Sony has created a new sister camcorder with the TRV25 giving consumers a low cost, smaller LCD alternative to the TRV27 if they want to save money.

The final camcorder Sony announced is the upgrade to the very popular DCR-TRV30. The new DCR-TRV50 includes all of the above features but with a 1.5 Megapixel CCD. This allows the camcorder to capture 530 lines of horizontal video resolution and 1,360 x 1,020 pixel still images. The camcorder includes a pop-up flash and will be available in May for about $1,600.

Here are pictures of the new camcorders:

Sony DCR-TRV18

Sony DCR-TRV25

Sony DCR-TRV27

Sony DCR-TRV18

The images of the camcorders are Copyright 2002 Sony Corp.