Is that the world’s smallest HD camcorder in your pocket?
March 1, 2010 by Nick Clayton · 2 Comments
The Xacti VPC-CS1
Some pedants might baulk at describing the camcorder’s top resolution of 1080i as “Full HD” because it isn’t really. But at 63 by 27 by 123mm it is impressively small and the weight of 159 grams with battery is just over five and a half ounces. In fact the magenta version has a certain Cadbury’s Dairy Milk feel to it.
The built-in HDMI port means the CS1 can be plugged straight into an HD TV, but the use of the MPEG4 format hints at the market for this camcorder. That’s the format for YouTube. Users can get their night’s exploits straight up online with minimum fuss.
It takes SD cards. So anybody willing to fork out an extra £85 or so on a 32GB card can store over four hours of the highest quality video or 11,500 3.3 megapixel still photographs.
Although the numbers are impressive there aren’t enough of the camcorders in the UK yet to see how it really performs especially up against the even smaller Flip MinoHD which is cheaper, but only shoots at 720p and doesn’t have an expansion slot.
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‘Most pedants’ are rather pitiful equipment junkies rather than broacast professionals and don’t know what the heck they’re talking about! Despite what the Dixon’s drone dribbles when he want’s to flog you a telly 1080i very definitely IS ‘full’ HD resolution… It’s exactly the same resolution as 1080p! They’re both 1920X1080 pixels. The only difference is that one uses interlaced scan and the other progressive. Each have their advantages and disadvantages; but they’re exactly the same resolution.
That said the MPEG4 compresion scheme on this thing makes it ‘not good’ for most serious uses. Nice toy though… Very nice toy… very very nice toy….
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I’ll stick with the Kodak Zi8 which does HD, allows for an external mike, isn’t much heavier than this and is generally wonderful.
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