[the_sanguine]

Aldi have a digital camcorder in for £80. Does anybody know anything about it? Any good? Also how long will it record on to a 1Mb SD card at decent quality?

[the_sanguine]

Sorry...I meant 1Gb of course.

[Battlestar]

what is the brand name of the camcorder?
Tivon/Bush/alba?

[the_sanguine]

It doesn't say.

Here's the spec:

Capture those treasured, unrepeatable moments with this all-in-one, ultra-clever, ultra-versatile MPEG 4 video camera/digital camera/internet camera/MP3 player/voice recorder.

You get 'real photo' 3.0 megapixel quality (2,048 x 1,532 pixels)
4 x digital zoom
2" fold out and rotatable colour LCD for direct image viewing
Includes four rechargeable batteries and charger
Expandable SD card slot
CMOS technology
MP3 player
VGA playback - 25 frames per second
Internal 64Mb memory
Headphones
USB and TV cable
Includes four rechargeable batteries and charger
Picture editing and DVD software
Webcam function

[MarkE19]

IMO the quality is likely to be very poor, and therefore I wouldn't touch any of the MPEG-4 camcorders.
If you think that a DVD is 4.7Gb and at best quality will hold 1 hour of video (yes I know that is MPEG-2 which in theory is not as good) and compare that to a 1Gb SD card, and add to this the cheap price you can see that the quality must be far lower. I know MPEG-4 can be great quality, but its not going to be on a cheap cam with on the fly compression. Even the DVD cams are poor compared to miniDV due to the real time compression.

OK so something like this may be great for the kids to play with, or as a video equivelent of the cheap compact camera as it is likely to be small & light and therefore easy to carry around. Just don't expect great things from it.

Mark.

[the_sanguine]

I guess you can't argue with the value for money though for something cheap and cheeful?