Sony DCR-TRV840 Camcorder Review

The Sony DCR-TRV840 has a 1/4.7 in. Megapixel CCD rated at 520 lines of resolution. The TRV840 includes a 15x optical, 420x digital zoom. Although the optical zoom is smaller than the lower Digital8 models, it is sufficient for most people's needs. Don't even bother comparing the digital zoom on this camcorder to others. Like every other consumer camcorder out there, the digital zoom degrades the picture quality so much that you shouldn't even bother using it. The camcorder includes a 3.5 in. LCD and a nice Black and White viewfinder. The camcorder also includes both a RCA composite in / out and a S-Video in / out.

As for picture controls, the DCR-TRV840 has a manual focus ring, plus a zoom rocker. The camcorder has a minimum shutter speed of 1/4000 and a maximum shutter speed of 1/4. The camcorder offers both pre-programmed auto exposure modes and manual exposure control. White balance is automatic and there is a variety of special effects also offered. The camcorder includes FireWire (i.Link as Sony likes to call it) in and out, plus composite in and out.

Digital8 is a digital format that Sony invented for low end camcorders, in an effort to bring digital video to more people. Digital8 records the same signal as MiniDV tapes onto Hi8 and 8mm tapes. Because there is more information is the digital signal than was in the classical Hi8 and 8mm signals, the tapes are recorded onto at double speed.

One of the downsides of the DCR-TRV840 is the lack of manual control. The camcorder lacks control of manual white balance and manual shutter speed and manual gain. Sony intentionally leaves out control of manual features on these camcorders to persuade those who want to do more professional shooting with their camcorders to buy the more expensive models. In fact the camcorders have manual white balance, manual shutter speed and manual gain built into them (possibly because the software inside the camcorder is the same as that in higher models), but it they are disabled. It is possible to enable them however you can break the camcorder trying to.

The microphone is placed right below the camcorder lens which is good placement. Smaller camcorders place the microphone often on the top of the camcorder facing up to the sky, which results in poor pickup of the sound you want in front of the camcorder, and pickup of the sound you don't want behind the camcorder. The camcorder has two sound recording options. You can either record in 12-bit mode with two tracks of audio, or in 16-bit mode with one track of audio. The camcorder also has a 1/8 in. mini-plug microphone in jack and a similar headphone jack for monitoring audio during playback and recording.

The DCR-TRV840 has a Memory Stick slot for saving digital still pictures to. The camcorder comes with an 8MB Memory Stick to save still pictures to. You can transfer your pictures from your camcorder to the computer using a USB port. The Megapixel CCD provides really great looking digital stills that you can print out and share with friends. The maximum still resolution is 1152 x 864 pixels. You can not achieve such high quality stills in any camcorder in this price range.

In addition to digital stills, you can record pretty poor quality, 160 x 112 resolution MPEG video to the Memory Stick or you can store 320 x 240 resolution MPEG video. Sony makes up to 128 MB memory sticks currently so you could save in my estimation up to 32 minutes of 160 x 112 resolution or 8 minutes of 320 x 240 resolution MPEG video on one stick using Sony's new MPEG MovieX feature which allows you to record video to fill up the Memory Stick, instead of being limited as you were with previous camcorders. You can transfer the movies and the stills to your computer using a supplied USB cable, but it does not allow you to transfer full resolution quality video from your tape to your computer (you have to use Firewire for that).

The DCR-TRV840 has other extra features. You can wirelessly play your videos on your VCR from up to 26 feet away using Sony's Super Laser Link® Wireless Transmitter, however you need to buy a receiver and the camcorder has to be in the line of sight of the receiver. The camcorders is rated at 0 LUX, however this is only with the use of Sony's NightShot, low light recording system. Older NightShot recorded in a mono-color green hue, but Sony has upgraded the system to full color night shot. The new night shot is improved over the older one however it still has a green tint to it. The DCR-TRV840 has analog to digital pass through. This feature allows you to take an analog source and plug it into the composite in's on the camcorder and then use the camcorder to convert the video to digital video on the fly. This allows you to effectively convert any analog source into a FireWire source using the camcorder's FireWire out.

The DCR-TRV840 also has a USB port to use the camcorder as a web cam. You can't use this USB port to transfer stills to your computer but you can use it as a web cam. The USB port works with Microsoft NetMeeting to do streaming over the web and video conferencing over the internet. You can stream both live and recorded video.

As I said above, the DCR-TRV840 is effectively the DCR-TRV740 but with a larger 3.5 in. LCD screen and progressive video. You should really evaluate whether or not you need a larger LCD screen. I think that the DCR-TRV740's 2.5 in. LCD screen is sufficient for most users. As for the progressive scan video, it is nice but not a very useful feature in my mind. An interesting thing about the camcorder is the lack of a digital still printer. Previously, with the DCR-TRV830, Sony included a digital printer to print stills on the go from the camcorder. It seems that this feature was not a hit, because Sony has decided not to include it in the DCR-TRV840, the upgrade of the DCR-TRV830.

With this latest round of Digital8 camcorders, I changed my position on the lower three models (The DCR-TRV340, DCR-TRV240 and DCR-TRV140). Prior to this latest upgrade I was very positive on those three models, but I feel Sony has fallen behind with the bottom three. However, Sony has remained on top in my opinion with the DCR-TRV840. The 840 is a great camcorder, it's only weakness might be that the upgraded features are not really needed. The performance of this camcorder is great, however I would recommend taking a strong look at the DCR-TRV740 which offers the same core features minus the progressive scan and a smaller LCD screen.