Buy Sony DCRTRV460 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical ZoomSony DCRTRV460 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom Product Description:
- Digital8 Handycam camcorder and digital still camera with 460,000-pixel CCD
- 20x optical zoom lens (digital zoom to 990x) with Super SteadyShot image stabilizer
- 2.5-inch rotating LCD and black-and-white viewfinder
- Low-light recording settings, Memory Stick Pro slot, and analog-to-digital conversion ability
- NP-FM30 InfoLithium Rechargeable Battery
Product Description
Digital8 record/play, Hi8/8mm play only * digital photo mode * MPEG Movie EX mode * 460,000-pixel CCD * 2-1/2" color touchpanel *
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
115 of 116 people found the following review helpful.
Great Quality Picture
By G. CALICO
Purchased this camcorder about a week ago. Ease of operation and a great operators manual help sort out technical items. Picture quality utilizing only standard grade 8mm tape is excellent. I can only imagine the more expensive metal particle or metal evaporated tapes may have even higher quality pictures. Have not had time to check out the camera picture quality using the memory stick. I do not expect any disappointments. Sony make a terrific camcorder product. Consumers reports recommends this as one of their "Best Buys" for digital camcorders. Sony & Panasonic both continually excell in the catagory as "Models requiring the least amount of repairs" or "Most trouble-free manufacturers". The battery that comes with the unit gives approximately 67 minutes of recording time on a normal charge. A full charge will give approximately 74 minutes. Recommend purchasing the FM-50 battery for extended recording/playing time and for nothing else, simply to have a back-up. I own a DVD recorder that allows me to transfer audio & video from my camcorder to DVD's . The camcorder has an A/V output for the consumer interested in transfering their home movies/digital images to DVD's. It also features an S-Video output for capturing even higher quality video. Some of the bad things: - The camcorder does not come with a portable/cordless charger. You have to plug the batteries into the camcorder and plug the adapter/charger into the camcorder to charge. Purchase an additional external charger for simplicity. - The camcorder does not come supplied with a memory stick. Consider purchasing at least 128 M. That way you can get approximately 80 minutes of recording time. - The battery supplied FM-30 (see above) is not adequate. Some of the good things: - Quality product - Image & sound quality excellent - Auto focus & stabilization also excellent - Great zoom feature All in all, a fantastic product with great performance and features at a very reasonable price. If you want to get into digital video recording for less that $ 500.00, try this one. GAC
84 of 84 people found the following review helpful.Perfect transition camcorder
By Jonno
My old 8mm camcorder died around Thanksgiving leaving me with 15 years worth of home movies and no way to view them. The TRV460 was at a great price point and perfectly bridges the gulf between analog and digital. I wanted to transfer the keepers stuff to DVDs and edit the really good stuff in to movies. I'm far from done, but I've worked with this camcorder enough to pass on some tips.CAMCORDER: Easy to use. Pictures are so much sharper than my analog camera (I know, no surprise here, but it had a wow factor for me). The camera is smaller than my old one, a little bigger than my two hands wrapped together. The touchscreen is easy to use - plan on studying the manual though. It's all in there and it's easy to read, but you have to approach it like a text book. It powers up quickly. Two things to beware of -- (1) the tape inserts through the bottom and this that if you use a screw tripod adapter you have to take it off the to insert a tape, (2) there are some features that only work on movies recorded to DV tape vs. recording straight to the memorystick - for example when you record to the memory stick it only records in mono.SOFTWARE: Other reviews are correct when they pan the software that comes with the camera. I bought Adobe Premiere Elements and it is great. I bought the adobe software from amazon - they were offering a Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements combo that I opted for after reading numerous reviews. I've used the full version of photoshop for years and the user interface of elements is dumbed-down but still has a familiar touch and enough features to do everything I want. Wait a minute - this is a camcorder review, sorry for the tangent.FIREWIRE/USB2.0: Elements will capture movies recorded to the memorystick via the USB2.0, but to do the same for movies recorded to tape you need a firewire cable. If your PC does not have a firewire port, you can just add a PCI firewire/usb2.0 card onto your motherboard (costs less than $20 for the card). I had bought the card at retail a year ago. But camcorders need a firewire cable with a 6 pin to 4 pin configuration. Found one on line recently (listing: 6ft IEEE 1394 FireWire Cable 6pin-4 DV Ihttp://amzn.com/dp/B0001BW0U6/?tag={ucomicscom} IPOD SONY) for less than a buck. Once you plug the firewire cable into the TRV460, you control the camera from the computer through the premiere software - no special settings or adjustments needed. By the way, you can do some camcorder to PC transfers using the USB2.0 cable and the Sony Picture Package software - but "clunky" is too kind.Along with the camcorder, there are some necessary accessories. I looked for low-cost options on all of these and was pretty successful. I'll pass them on here - for what they're worth.DIGITAL TAPES: Sony makes many different types of tapes that are good for recording digital. The Sony Digital8 Camcorder Tapes (at first I thought these were the only ones that would work) costs $20 a pair at retail. There are many other 8mm tapes that are compatible for less than half this cost (check out Sony's website for compatibility).MEMORY STICK: Again I went online to find a good price on a memory stick. But the stick I bought was not compatible with this camcorder (listing: SanDisk 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo Sony 256 MB DSC-T1 +). The camcorder would only intermittently recognize the stick (mostly it wouldn't). Searches on the web showed that many people had this problem. The kind customer service dept at SanDisk agreed to check it out and said they would probably replace it. They did and the newer version of the same memorystick works fine. While I was waiting I bought a Sony 256MB memory stick at a retail store and, of course, it works fine. I got a memory card reader to plug into my USB port (listing: USB MS/MEMORY STICK CARD READER) so I could transfer movies to the PC without involving the camcorder.ANALOG TAPE TO MEMBORY STICK TRANSFER: One cool thing I learned about the camera is you can copy scenes from an analog tape to the memory stick all from within the camcorder. With the touch screen monitor, it is very easy to do. This is great if you want to compile selected scenes (from the huge pile of old 8mm tapes) without sitting at the computer. I did a lot of this analog tape-to-memorystick xfer (using just the camera) while sitting around the fire with my family - it made me a little more sociable with the family than if I were staring at the computer.BATTERY: Another reviewer posted some tips on non-Sony batteries. I took an even cheaper approach that worked great. On line I bought a charger (listing: CHARGER for SONY NP-F550 NP-FM50 NP-QM71 QM91 BATTERY) for less than a fiver and a high capacity battery (listing: SONY NP-QM71 NP-FM70 DCR-TRV950 2800mAh BATTERY NEW) for less than fifteen bucks.So that's it. I feel like the only splurge was on the tape editing software. I could have stayed with the free Sony Picture Package - but the Adobe is so much easier and does tons more. If you amortize it over the hours you spend on editing, the $100 bucks or so is not that much.My PC is a off-brand clone with a AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU running at 2.07 MHz, wtih 512MB ram, running XP Home Edition SP2 and a ATI AIW 8500DV videocard. I like this camcorder a lot!
45 of 45 people found the following review helpful.TRV460 Great Camera - don't let new battery type scare you
By A Customer
An Earlier Post stated that "Only sony batteries can be used" in the TRV460. Wrong, only infolithium batteries can be used. No more NiCads but plenty of non-sony brand batteries will work just fine in the camera.
I purchase CE brand infolithiums "NP-QM71 battery for Sony Li-Ion 7.2V 2400mAh (kq)", the cost is $25 compared to $75 to $100 for the Sony, and they work great.
The camera is fantastic, my only complaint would be the small hard to reach zoom control on top, but other than that a great camera.
Don't let the battery issue scare you off, just have to use infolithiums, Sony or Generic is up to you.
This is the perfect Camera to go digital and still be backward compatible with all those 8mm and Hi-8mm tapes.
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