Click and Shoot Camcorder
Meet the e-camcorder. Sony’s new Network Handycam puts something different in your viewfinder: the Internet. When you aren’t shooting video, you can browse the Web and swap e-mail.
I tested the $1,700 Network Handycam DCR-IP7BT. This palm-size, 12-ounce marvel of miniaturization may contain more exotic technology per square inch than any piece of gear I’ve ever used. It’s almost a concept cam, a flight of engineering fancy whose motors are so small they sound like mosquitoes.
But the Network Handycam is handicapped by several flaws. The camcorder uses a new tape format called MicroMV. Developed by Sony, the MicroMV format stores as much as 60 minutes of video on a cassette the size of a matchbox--smaller, in fact, than the tiny audio cassettes used by dictation recorders.
To shoehorn an hour into a matchbox, the MicroMV format compresses video using the MPEG-2 format--the same compression scheme used for DVDs and satellite TV. The video quality is excellent, but the nature of MPEG-2 compression causes the Network Handycam’s biggest flaw: Each time the scene changes during playback, the sound cuts out and the picture freezes for a second.
This makes for a jarring playback experience, especially if you paused frequently when shooting. Camcorders that use the larger mini-DV tapes don’t have this shortcoming--transitions between scenes are clean and instantaneous.
Another drawback to the MicroMV format surfaces if you plan to transfer your video to a computer for editing. The Handycam IP has a FireWire jack (called i.Link by Sony), but the camcorder is incompatible with the Mac platform, on which no video-editing program supports MPEG-2.
The camera does work with FireWire-equipped Windows PCs, but only if you use Sony’s video-editing program, called MovieShaker.
The Network Handycam’s small size makes for small buttons that big hands might find cumbersome.
I found the camera’s zoom control particularly awkward, and apparently I’m not alone: Tucked alongside the Handycam’s manual was a separate sheet clarifying how to use the zoom.
The camcorder I tested also contained a slot for a Sony Memory Stick. The Memory Stick can hold short movies or snapshots created in the camcorder’s digital-camera mode. You can transfer stored photos to a PC or a Mac using the camera’s built-in Universal Serial Bus port.
Or you might just want to e-mail them using the Network Handycam’s Internet features, which are slick and weird at the same time.
The slick part: You can e-mail movies and still photos directly from the camera--no need to transfer them to a computer first. And seeing a Web page on the camcorder’s fold-out screen is kind of cool. (You also can connect the camcorder to a TV set to surf on a large screen).
To connect to the Internet, the camcorder talks to an external 56-kilobit-per-second modem via Bluetooth, a wireless networking technology designed for short-range (about 30 feet) links between peripherals. Unfortunately, Sony doesn’t offer a Bluetooth interface for high-speed Internet connections.
The weird part: To type Web addresses and e-mails, you must pick out letters one at a time from an on-screen menu. It’s slow going. Even after practice, it took a full minute to type in www .latimes.com. Choosing Web links is similarly exhausting.
A Bluetooth-enabled wireless keyboard would make the camcorder’s Internet features more practical, but no such beast is available.
Its shirt-pocket portability is appealing, but I can’t recommend the Network Handycam because of the MicroMV format’s stuttering video playback and limited PC compatibility.
Consider a mini-DV-format camcorder instead. Sony has some fine offerings here, and one of them, the $2,000 DCR-PC120BT, also has those wacky Internet features.
