Sony DCR-DVD201

I looked at the DCR-DVD201 at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) annual convention in Las Vegas, where the camcorders were introduced. The DCR-DVD201, along with it's sister the DCR-DVD101 are Sony's second generation of DVD camcorders, replacing the DCR-DVD100, DCR-DVD200 and the DCR-DVD300. During the 2003 holiday season, Sony's first generation of DVD camcorders were some of the best selling camcorders of the season, and so this year's models are highly anticipated. The biggest changes with the DCR-DVD201 is it's smaller size and smaller CCD.

Video Performance
The DCR-DVD201 includes a 1/5 in. 1,070K effective pixel CCD with 690K effective pixels for video. The CCD on the DCR-DVD201 is smaller than the CCD that was included on the DCR-DVD200, which was 1/4.7 in. It would be unfair to make any conclusions about the video performance of the DCR-DVD201 based on looking at in at PMA because the show floor is not conducive to testing video, low light or still performance.

The Front
The front of the DCR-DVD201 is split up into two sides. On the right side at the top is the lens. Below that is an IR receiver, with the model name and the stereo microphone below that. On the left side of the front is the side of the DVD mechanism, which sticks out from the front of the camcorder slightly. The DVD mechanism is very forward on the camcorder - which actually serves a nice purpose of protecting the microphone from your hand.

The Right Side
In the top left corner of the right side of the DCR-DVD201 is the DC-in jack covered by a piece of soft plastic. Moving down slightly is the silver power dial for selecting between VCR, recording and still modes. The rest of the DCR-DVD201 is consumed by the DVD mechanism, and the handle strap goes along the bottom of the right side. One thing worth nothing on the DVD mechanism of the DCR-DVD201 is that Sony has simplified the DVD eject and insertion process from the previous models, allowing you to just put the DVD in a press the camcorder closed.

The Back
The back of the DCR-DVD201 is mostly consumed with the battery slot. Above the battery slot, on the left side is the DCR-DVD201's viewfinder, to the right of that is the remote jack which is covered by a piece of soft plastic. In an interesting move, Sony is now calling what used to be the Control-L / Lanc jack the remote jack, even though it's the same thing.

The Left Side
The left side of the DCR-DVD201 is broken down into two parts, the upper part being the lens barrel and the lower part being the LCD screen. Along the lens barrel, towards the back are four buttons. The first is the display / battery info, next is the backlight and third is the visual index button. Behind those three is a four way directional pad. Last year's models had a similar directional pad inside the LCD screen. The directional pad is used for controlling focus and other manual picture functions, and for navigating through the DVD interface.

Opening the LCD screen reveals five rows of buttons. The first row includes the fader, focus, and exposure buttons. Below that is the volume control and the Setup button. The next row includes the record and finalize button. The next row includes the rewind, fast-forward, and edit buttons. The final row includes the play, pause and stop buttons.

Automatic Control
The DCR-DVD201 offers the same level of automatic control as other camcorders - however unlike the Sony MiniDV models, the DCR-DVD201 doesn't include Spot Metering or Spot Focus - which require a touch screen LCD.

Overall Manual Control
The DCR-DVD201 is slightly unique in it's manual control options in that it gives a four way dial for adjusting manual picture functions, and dedicated buttons for focus and exposure. However, the camcorder includes no shutter speed or manual gain control.

Zoom
The DCR-DVD201 includes a 10x optical zoom. The zoom controller on the DCR-DVD201 is very small. The small size makes it very hard to get variable speed zooms and even harder to keep those zooms at a constant speed.

Focus
The focus on the DCR-DVD201 is controlled by pressing the focus button inside the LCD screen. The directional pad on the left side of the camcorder adjusts the focus. The directional pad provides good focus control, however the biggest problem is that the button to toggle the focus on or off is hidden inside the LCD screen. Putting the button on the outside of the camcorder, or rather, putting a focus ring on would be even better.

Exposure (Aperture)
The exposure control, is nearly identical to the focus control. Using a button that's hidden inside the menu screen, you can toggle between auto and manual exposure control, and use the directional pad to adjust the exposure. Again, the biggest downside of this style of exposure control is that you have to open up the LCD screen to access it, however it is much better than Sony's touch screen system.

Shutter Speed
The DCR-DVD201 offers no manual shutter speed control.

White Balance
The DCR-DVD201 offers four manual white balance modes, accessible through the menu including, full auto, full manual, indoor and outdoor.

VCR Mode
The VCR, or rather playback mode on the DCR-DVD201 is slightly more unique than tape based camcorders. In playback mode you are given three options, video, stills or vr mode. In video and still mode, each recording or each picture is represented by a thumbnail in a matrix on the screen. The VR mode is for video editing, where you can set play lists for simple editing.

LCD / Viewfinder
The DCR-DVD201 includes a 2.5 in. color LCD screen. Sony has added the hybrid LCD screen technology to this year's DVD models. The hybrid LCD technology includes reflexive-transmissve technology which allows the LCD screen to be easily viewed both in normal lighting conditions and in direct sunlight.

Handling
The DCR-DVD201 is small. And by small I mean tiny. It's quite impressive how they were able to shrink the DCR-DVD201, which according to Sony is 29% smaller than last years DCR-DVD200. The shrinkage is impressive, and on the upside the camcorder can very easily be gripped in your hand, but on the downside, the lighter weight and smaller size mean that the DCR-DVD201 is much harder to hold still than the DCR-DVD200 was. In general, the DCR-DVD201 feels much more comfortable in your hands, and the record button is well placed - so it should be good for point and shoot operations but stability and manual control are difficult.

The control layout of the DCR-DVD201, is okay, better than the MiniDV touch screens, but not great. The worse placement is the exposure and the focus being hidden inside the LCD screen. Why Sony decided to put such unused features like backlight, and display / battery info on the outside of the camcorder and the focus and exposure buttons on the inside confounds me.

Stills
The Megapixel CCD on the DCR-DVD201 produces stills at 1,152 x 864 pixel resolution saved to the DVD media. Stills can be transferred to a computer either by putting the DVD in your computer or by hooking the camcorder up to the computer through it's USB 2.0 port.

Audio
Like most camcorders, the microphone on the DCR-DVD201 is placed in the front of the camcorder. On Sony's 2004 MiniDV models, as well as many camcorders by other manufacturer's, the placement of the microphone in the front of the camcorder creates problems because your fingers are likely to tap it. Interestingly, the DVD mechanism on the DCR-DVD201 extends outward in-front of the camcorder slightly, which it seems will protect the microphone from being tapped, but might also create problems in picking up sound on the right. The DCR-DVD201 includes a dedicated microphone in jack and a headphone out jack. The camcorder also includes a shoe for connecting external microphones.

Jacks and Ports
The DCR-DVD201 includes a USB 2.0 jack, an S-Video jack and RCA video and audio jack, a microphone in jack, headphone out jack as well as a shoe for accessories.

Other Features
Super Night Shot With this year's camcorders Sony is introducing a new color version of their Night Shot feature. Previous versions of Night Shot had a green hue to them. Color night shot uses whatever color information is available to the camcorder and integrates that in giving you some color in the picture.

Battery Information The battery information button, when pressed displays the remaining time left on the battery without fully powering up the camcorder.

Conclusions
Sony has certainly made improvements with the DCR-DVD201. The camcorder is much smaller, and I like the addition of the four way directional pad - it makes operating the camcorder much easier. The camcorder maintains the benefits of being able to record to a DVD and watch your video by simply placing the DVD into your camcorder. The big downside of the DCR-DVD201's shrinkage however is that Sony reduced the CCD size, which will likely decrease the video quality and the low light performance - however we'll have to have a model for hands-on testing before we can make any conclusions in that area.