July 26, 2007
Camcorders for the YouTube generation
Consumer electronics companies are catching on to the quick-sharing habits of the YouTube generation, with everything from iPhones to internet televisions becoming online video enabled.
The camcorder market sees this as a major opportunity for growth. Unit sales have been stuck at around 4.7m in the US for the past few years but the Consumer Electronics Association is predicting a 20 per cent increase next year due to the growth of user-generated content on the web and high definition.
The $120 Flip video camcorder has led the way with idiot-proof recording and a USB connection that flips out. I’ve used the movie option on my Sony DSC-T100 digital camera to record and upload to YouTube and Sony’s "Net Sharing Camcorder" , which will also function as a webcam, goes on sale in September at $200. A Casio Exilim stills camera, out next month, even has specific YouTube uploader software.
Samsung have just showed me their MX-10 camcorder, also out next month and costing around $300.
It’s shaped like a soda can and has simple controls like the Flip’s, including a record button and zoom built into the flip-open display.
The MX-10 records on a standard SD flash memory card used in digital cameras. It comes with a 512Mb one, but 4Gb and even 8Gb cards are now becoming affordable, giving several hours of recording time.
In the demonstration, Samsung took the card out and slotted it into a notebook’s card reader, quickly uploading the footage to YouTube. The lightweight camcorder also has both TV and PC playback modes, recognising that many people are now hooking their devices to their computers rather than their TVs to review their home video efforts.
