Oregon Scientific's DV100 MPEG4 video camera
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted November 18th 2004 12:10PM
posted November 18th 2004 12:10PM
Oregon Scientific's DV100 digital video camera packs some spec punch for a low price (199GBP, or $368). It uses 4.0-megapixel optics and can shoot still photos or 30 frame-per-second Mpeg 4 video. It hooks up via USB2.0 and uses SD MMC cards, and also sports a 1.8-inch swivel LCD. Unfortunately, it only comes with 16MB of memory in the box, so if you're after this thing (out of stock currently, of course), you'll want to get a chunkier SD card immediately. Too good to be true? Perhaps, but with this bang-for-buck ratio, it might be worth a try. Besides, look how happy the family is in the product shot - that could be you!
[Via TechDigest]
is it me or am I missing something...why haven't the manufacturer's of this stuff began to incorporate micro drives (like iPODs) into these cameras? Why buy a storage card when for $50 to $100 more, the camera could have a 40G drive in the machine? has anyone seen one of these and I just missed it?
What great value! My brother is looking for a DV Cam for photos and video (having just become a Dad!) - I thought that this kind of product would be way out of range for a Christmas present - but not now! Any idea where I can get one? or when they'll be in stock?
I'm thinking a hardrive base video cam wouldnt' work due to the slow write speed? maybe, Just a guess. Well, I know that the quality of the dvd cams arent' great due to the slow write speed from that.
Wow, I am in! This looks like it could be an amazing product if it isn't vapourware. I'd love to seen this available in North America. Anyone else notice that there aren't any manuals for the DV100 on the Oregon Scientific website? Perhaps this is too good to be true.
Samsung had something called the IT-CAM7 concept a few years ago and was supposed to be released in Aug03 - never happened. That was replaced with the new one posted on engadget a few days ago. This thing looks cool! :) But for $199 (or less on ebay) you can have the all-n-1 Mustek DV5500 :) check ebay or thinkgeek.com - neat toy, though Im sure not as high quality as some otehr units, but for the price, hey what the hell!
looks fantastic - the first video camera i would actually want. I remember back in 2001 reading all about mp4 and thinking the future of video is with this, but mp4 cameras have all looked a bit naff (inferior to tape) - till now. . .
Actually, I just went shopping for one of these - on the article, MPEG4 is pretty good, but if you want it to look better than VCR tape encoded to an avi, you really should look for MPEG 2 encoding.
Also, JVC just announced (and has on their website, but haven't seen any place that is selling) a hard-drive based fully digital pocket cam. They start at around a grand, and have some cool shock dampening systems.
Actually, I was thinking that if write speed were an issue with putting a micro HD in a DV cam like this, then you'd simply put in a caching system between the source and the HD that would dump into the HD as needed. However I doubt that write speed to the micro HD is an issue, I mean you can easily transfer files from your PC to an HD based MP3 player at a great amount of speed—and that's over USB 2.0 or Firewire so imagine the speed of such when the source and the drive are right next to each other since bandwidth between them wouldn't be an issue.
I think the the Pentex solution is a better solution. It has 10X10 zoom. Same thing DV and dig camera.
I would imagine the main reason why microdrives are not implemented in these devices is due to the amount of additional power drain they would represent. In consideration of what the last person posted, the additional hardware that would be necessary to match write rate would increase power consumption as well.
I would imagine the main reason why microdrives are not implemented in these devices is due to the amount of additional power drain they would represent. In consideration of what the last person posted, the additional hardware that would be necessary to match write rate would increase power consumption as well.
This look good but have anyone use one? I have try many different pocket dv camera and none of them works good in low light situations.
JVC has two cams like this, but considderably higher spec.
http://www.jvc.co.uk/product-list.php?id=100094
The problem with these is you need very high spec cards to handle the datarate of the MPEG-2. I really want Sony to release one so i can just keep memorysticks for that and my P10. MemoryStick Pro can also handle the transfer rate no problem and SanDisk has very large capacity card on the way :)
What is the difference between mpeg 2 and 4. Why is one better than the other?
Doesn't Aiptek make a very similar product, for signifficantly less money? I bought one for a friend recently, the Aiptek DV 4500, cost me $130 shipped (look for it on Froogle). Engadged featured it a few days ago:
http://portablevideo.engadget.com/entry/2745421329707386/
how is the quality on the Aiptek DV 4500? any sample video clips at different quality settings and any sample pictures taken with it?
I'll second the power issue. Flashes take enough power already. Let's be honest about memory, though. With MPEG 2, you can get an hour of video in 2GB. A 2GB CF (yeah, the "old" technology) costs about $130. For pictures, and even movies, flash memory is more than enough. We need to stop this hard drive craze. Storing information that's important on a hard drive is a bad idea. Primary storage for pictures and music shouldn't be portable- it's asking to lose data.