New Handycam goes digital
The checklist of things to pack when shooting video of the family reunion usually includes extra batteries and extra tapes.
Sony’s new Handycam models will help push those tapes closer to obsolescence. As with many new camcorders, the video goes straight to a hard drive, with up to 60 gigabytes of room.
The DCR-SR42, available now at www.sonystyle.com and from electronics retailers, is the 30-gigabyte version and sells for less than $600. Despite the large amount of disk space, the SR42 is compact and weighs only 11 ounces.
Sony says the hard drive can hold 20 hours of video if you shoot at the lowest resolution. At the highest quality, that drops to seven hours. The supplied battery lets you shoot continuously for just over an hour and a half, while an optional lithium-ion battery ($160) will last up to 10 hours.
While this is primarily a video camera, there is a slot for a Memory Stick Pro Duo card to store still photos. Video is recorded in standard MPEG2 format rather than a proprietary format as with some of Sony’s competitors, giving you more flexibility in terms of editing and watching. – Stephen C. Miller, The New York Times
Use your Mac to link TV, iPod
With the Miglia TVMax+, a Mac can quietly record television shows and share them with an iPod and Apple TV, creating a symbiotic ecosystem where electronics are the fauna and episodes of “24” are the tasty flora.
The TVMax+ is a small box about the size and shape of Apple’s diminutive Mac Mini. The device has a cable TV tuner built in and allows you to watch, record and pause live TV right on a computer monitor.
It also records directly from a DVD player, VHS tape player or any video device.
Once you are ready to feed your peripherals, the TVMax+ can send video files into your iTunes library and any iTunes-compatible devices.
The $249 TVMax+, available at store.miglia.com, comes with a remote control for skipping through commercials and selecting video to transfer. It records in iPod-compatible and DivX video formats at standard resolution.
Like the majestic tree sloth, the TVMax+ plays an important yet almost invisible role in its environment. – John Biggs, The New York Times
