Scoble's new toy -- hard drive based camcorder

I wanted another $400 camcorder and walked out with $1,100 one. Hmmm. Do you think Lenn will approve this?

Well, if it does work out (I have 14 days to return it) it'll actually save us a lot of time and money on digitizing the videos.

Will have to see the quality first, though.

I know that, but to get them into my computer I need to play the tape. That takes time.

I usually dump the whole thing in.

I'll probably end up going back to a tape-based camcorder because of the price and lack of features. But, it'll be fun to see if it changes my workflow in any real way.

Every six tapes costs me $36 too. In a year I've shot probably about $500 in tapes. So, that might be useful.

I'll post some videos over on Ourmedia this weekend so you can see the results.

Heh. I gotta get the SQL Server team to let me store on their HP Superdome (the one that has 2,500 hard drives).

The ULTIMATE video storage device! Heh!

urbandude: so far I've been unimpressed. But, yeah, goal is to have some samples up this weekend.

As to the church: all is not lost. They still use a TON of Windows computers everywhere.

And, I'm going to have them DROOLING over Avalon.

(They use plasma screens all over the place to direct people various places -- Avalon would be awesome to use there).

Manip: I hear there's even better G5's coming out. Think multi-core.

But, Macs don't do WMV unfortunately. No Windows Media Encoder out for the Mac.

Doing MPEG is sounding interesting, though, but playing MPEG is a real PITA on Windows. I just tried to play some. Not good.

Charles: a few problems, though.

1) Tapes are portable. Hard drives built into computers are not.
2) Tapes are cheap. Adding more hard drives aren't.
3) Tapes are hard to erase. You have to explicitly stick one in a camcorder and record over it (and you usually need to rewind the tape to do that). Hard drives are very easy to erase.
4) Tapes don't require a password for you to get access to them. So, if I get hit by a bus you still can look at all the tapes in my office.
5) The time to reencode an MPG2 to an MPG4 or a Windows Media format is about the same as just encoding from tape to MPG4 or Windows Media, so what's the workflow advantage?

I filmed a test tonight. The quality on this camera isn't as nice as the $350 Sony that you have. And this one costs $1100.

Also, the battery only lasts an hour. Yours lasts three.

And the Sony camcorders take external microphones. This camcorder doesn't.

Translation: it's going back to Best Buy.

I wasn't pressured. I like buying locally, even though the prices are higher, because I get service. For instance, I'm taking back the camcorder tomorrow and getting a full refund. Yes, I could do that via online, but I'd need to ship it back and there's always the risk that something would go wrong and I'd need to fight and take time.

I like going into a local store. Shoot me.

And I think that people who go and look at things at a local store and then buy online are really lame. I hate it when people do that. Either be online or be local. Don't play the local retailer. What happens when they go out of business? Then you won't have a choice.