Sony HDR-HC1 HDV camcorder reviewed

Sony's HDR-HC1 — the company's smallest and most affordable HD camcorder — is about to hit the street (er, not literally, we hope), and the lucky devils at Camcorderinfo.com got their mitts on a review unit. What did they think of the $1,700 (street) camcorder? With specs that include 1080i recording, a 2.7-inch touchscreen LCD, image stabilization and a Zeiss lens, Camcorderinfo.com declared that "the HDR-HC1 is poised to be a big seller, not only because it is the most affordable HDV personal video device yet to hit the market. Behind its HDV logo is a camcorder with an amazingly crisp image and performance in many conditions that lives up to this new technology's name." Guess that means they liked it.

[655321 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

i remeber when i bought a mini dv cam 5 years ago and spent 1000 on it...(well my friend worked at best buy and got it for me for like 600) I thought it was a pretty nice camera.....yeah it ended up being a waste. The camera didnt even have audio in. So basicaly it was useless for me to use to shoot b-roll and quick shots for my film classes.

[Chris Kalan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Is this a successor to the HDR-FX1?? I loved that machine, but it was $3800, so I'm wondering if this is the successor? Anyone know?

[Keith Wakeham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Its not a successor, its their low end hdv offering, its to compliment the fx1

I don't really care what minidv can capture, but to me this isn't HD, not even close. I quote
"the new HD Sony showed 656.1 lines of horizontal resolution and 480.9 lines of vertical resolution"

Isn't SD 720 x 480 (and thats .9 pixel aspect, gets strected to something like 540), so with all the compression and price hdv finally brings you true SD.

Overall looks better than mini dv cameras and if you can live with the difficulty for editing an mpeg2 stream then its a great camera. Not for me but in means HD is picking up.

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

It's not *really* 1080i. I believe it's 1440x1080. You can't call that "1080i recording". Sony fudges this by saying the camcorder has "1080i output", but this is not the same as actually getting 1080i resolution. I mean, my cable box outputs old Seinfeld re-runs in 1080i at 11PM every night, but that doesn't mean I'm getting 1920x1080 resolution out of the picture.

Still, 1440x1080 is pretty good for a $1,700 camcorder. To get true 1080i, you have to spend much more than that.

[Brad Gillette @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

To Chris:
This is not the successor. It is instead aimed at the family/consumer audience, while the FX-1 and it's professional brother are aimed at professionals and prosumers. It is a much smaller camera, and with it's 1 CCD and not as many manual controls, it fits right in as a step up from sony's standard miniDV cameras, and yet not as intimidating as the FX1. As always with Sony camcorders, in the next few months you will see the price go down, and it will be the perfect camera for hobbyists, soccer dads, and iMovie users wanting to get a piece of high-definition action. I think this will be the replacement for my trusty TRV-70 that I have been oh so patiently waiting for.

[nemi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Who wants 1080*i*? After seeing the horror of computer editing interlaced video I would only ever want a video cammera that does 480p, 720p or 1080p.

If someone brough out an affordable 720p video cammera that allowed digital export to a PC (for editing) in 1280x720p I would buy it.

I fail to see why this technology costs so much, 720p is less than 1.3 MP.

With a fast enough CPU any modern digital cammera should be able to offer 30fps 1280x720 capture to Flash card. Yet a >$500, >5MP cammera that can also shoot 640x480 video clips pixels is considered state-of-the-art!

[Peter @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Jeff, I agree it doesn't meet the technical requirements of 1080i HD, but it's going to look gorgeous enough for most people to not care.
Although who wants a 4:3 "HD" camera? What happens when you play it back on a true 16:9 HD display? Is everything stretched or is it pillarboxed? Either way, it seems like they are cheaping out.

[Peter @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

nemi, Because certain things look better shot interlaced vs progressive. Interlaced is 60 _fields_ per second and progressive is 30 _frames_ per second. So interlaced is sampling the "source" twice as often (but only recoding half the samples).
720p might be less than 1.3MP, but its 1.3 per frame. You need to capture, process and store that frame in less than 1/30th of a second. It's not as easy as taking and storing a single still image.

[Malfoy Roark @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I'll probably get one. Anyone know if BB or CompUSA will get them? I really like to be able to walk in and raise hell if my shiz don't work!

[John Laur @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

"the new HD Sony showed 656.1 lines of horizontal resolution and 480.9 lines of vertical resolution"

Video resolution and image/sensor resolution are WAY different things. This score is a very good resolution score for this type of camera -- it's at least 3x more resolution than most consumer/prosumer DV cameras, even most of the compact 3ccd units. They state this a couple of paragraphs down. Seeing as it's priced similarly to these offerings too, it's not a difficult choice whether or not to pick up this camera vs a standard high end DV camcorder at the same price point.

I have had my HDR-HC1 preordered for some time now. I can't wait to get it!

I really wish, though, that camcorderinfo had provided some full resolution stills of their test target (both from the camera in still mode and video stills in both DV and HDV footage). I also wish they had provided some sample clips of HDV, though being the first 'scoop' offering a couple hundred megs of video for download would probably have been a little much :)

[nemi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Peter / #8.

Most Cinema Film is 24 fps. Looks good enough for me.

If you really need >30fps then by all means, but it will still be nicer to have 60 fps progressive rather than 60fps interlaced.

Interlacing is a kludge fromt he old days because technology was not good enough at dawn of TV.

I am still in horror that 1080*i* ever became a "standard". Let's leave "mice teeth" and the CPU overhead of temporal+spacial interpolation in the last century.

[mikey @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

HDV is a horrible codec, way below HD quality, looking around 20 to 1 (standard HD dvcpro is about 5 to 1).

the reason why 720p technology costs so much is because it's on the pro market, not the consumer market. When the market demands HD video as the mainstream, it will be there. But most people don't need it, and can't tell the difference (unfortunately).

[bwhaler @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Does anyone know if this will work with the Mac and with FCP Express and iMovie?

[narrativium @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

bwhaler, any HDV camcorder will work with the current versions of FCE and iMovie.

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Keith:

Don't you have to multiply by 2 to go from lines to pixels? i.e. it takes two pixels to get a line pair; a line and a space. So 656 lines is really 1312 pixels?
Mike

[MSPro User @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I just looked up the price of the HDV plug-in for Ulead Media Studio Pro 7 - $300. Again, that's just for the plug-in. Plus Ulead recommends a minimum 3GHz P4 processor for editing of the MPEG-2 files. During capture the plug-in converts the data from "transport stream" to an editable "program stream". And forget about real-time editing and previews of your HDV projects - you'll have to render everything before viewing. Are you ready for all that? I know I'm not.

[Ethan @ Dec 23rd 2005 7:08PM]

I'm thinking of buying it, I've found a place where refurbished, it is $1,024. Anyway, I was wondering why some versions of it (including the picture shown above) have a rectangular lense and others have a circular lense. Are the rectangular lenses ones you have to buy separately? If so, what are their purpose? I am even more confused because I went to Best Buy, and the one on display there was built with a rectangular lense, and you didn't have to buy it separately. Can anyone tell me the difference?