Aldi Memory Card Camcorder

B

Breffni Boy

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I don't know if this has been asked yet but I see Aldi are selling a "Memory Card Camcorder" on Thursday next. I was wondering if this is as good as it seems. I presume I would need to buy the 1Gb Memory Card aswell. How much recording time would a 1 GB card give me? Any answers would be appreciated as I know very little about this type of thing.

BB
 
I bought the Lidl equivalent last year. As I recall it came with a 256mb card. This gave me about 10 minutes at best resolution. This would suggeat 1gb would give around 40 minutes. The quality was ok if you were viewing in a small window on your pc but was very poor on a larger screen tv. I found someone willing to buy mine and I sold it after a month. I think my advise would be to keep the €200 you'll pay for the cam and the card and add a bit to it and buy an entry level "real" camcorder
 
Just to clarify - are your criticisms about resolution/quality directed at digital camcorders in general rather than the Aldi device in particular? What do you mean by a "real" camcorder?
 
ClubMan said:
are your criticisms about resolution/quality directed at digital camcorders in general rather than the Aldi device in particular?

What do you mean by a "real" camcorder?
Click to expand...

My comments were directed exclusively at the Lidl camcorder. It was little more than a webcam in terms of resolution and quality. Attempting to play recordings on anything bigger than a small window (e.g. Windows Media Player) resulted in total distortion of the images.

By a "real" camcorder I mean one that will give a reasonable quality picture on a standard size TV
 
OK - I thought that your criticisms were more general and that "real" camcorder meant something that uses (analog rather than digital) tape storage or something like that. Thanks for the clarification.
 
Crunchie said:
My comments were directed exclusively at the Lidl camcorder. It was little more than a webcam in terms of resolution and quality. Attempting to play recordings on anything bigger than a small window (e.g. Windows Media Player) resulted in total distortion of the images.

By a "real" camcorder I mean one that will give a reasonable quality picture on a standard size TV
Click to expand...

Check out this link - a bit out of date, but informative nonetheless.

MPEG4 camcorders should look ok on a TV but 1GB is still a bit small to store much data at high quality. Until the media gets bigger or unless you can record MPEG-4 onto a hard disk or DV tape than a normal DV camcorder is probably a better idea, IMHO.
 
any good digi camera will take mpegs as well nowadays. i have a fuji s7000 and the full motion clips with sound are about vhs quality which is streets ahead of most. they still eat memory though at about 100mb per min.
if i was you id buy either a proper digital tape camcorder or a good digicam. the cheap(ish) mpeg camcorders are just toys and you wont be happy with the quality
 
Thanks for all the replys. I think I'll hold off and make do with the old hunky analogue one I borrow when needed.

BB
 
I understand there is no optical zoom on the cheaper Aldi camcorders. While I haven't used a camcorder much, I find that lack of zoom on a still camera is very restrictive.

On a more general issue, while I like the idea of getting a camcorder to record those special family moments, I'm just wondering when (if ever) I'll actually get to watch the shots. Any comments from camcorder owners about how often you actually view the material?
 
hardly ever, plus getting time to edit the tapes is very difficult. i get far more use from my digital camera
 
i should have also said that although i rarely use it, i am still very glad i bought the camcorder as it is nice to be able to grap those occasional special moments in full digital tv quality
 
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