Samsung and Sharp Release New MiniDV Camcorders

by Robin Liss
Published on Jan 8, 2002 12:00 AM



Sharp Corporation, a long time player in the camcorder industry has released three new models for the 10th anniversary of their Viewcam line at CES. Samsung, a smaller player in the camcorder industry also is talking about two new MiniDV camcorders which they claim will be the smallest yet.

Sharp announced the VL-NZ50U, VL-NZ100U, and the VL-NZ150U. The top two models have an SD slot and includes 8mb and 16 mb SD cards respectively. They will be available in February. We will give you more details as they come in.

Samsung, a minor player in the camcorder industry is showing pre release models of two MiniDV camcorders which they claim will be the smallest camcorders yet. They include 2.5 in. LCD screens, a 211K CCD, a 10x optical 400x ddigital zoom, IEEE 1394 FireWire in and out, USB for transfering stills from the camcorder to the computer, and a night shot like mode. The biggest news with these camcorders is that with the top models the digital stills will be saved onto Sony's Memory Stick brand. many opponents of this format argued that Memory Sticks are a bad choice because they are proprietary and only supported by Sony, however now with the news that another camcorder brand will be supporting Memory Sticks, it's a shot in the arm to the other card types.