[gravy1]

Hi I'm (like most people here) looking for help.

I'm touring europe by motorcycle in August and want to record it all and am undecided between using and Archos or a hdd camcorder. The archos seems to have lots of good plus points (portable media, wifi, large hard drive) and quite a few bad points (have to buy extras and codecs and some problem with films that exceed 100 minutes) so I was wondering if there's a hdd camcorder out there that has a reasonably large hard drive and I can connect to a helmet cam/ bullet cam. That is if you feel the camcorder is more suitable for the job. All advice gratefully received.
Oh and the average recording time will be in daily 2 hour segments for 3 weeks

[lurcher]

To be honest I think you will struggle to find a Hdd camcorder with av in , I had had models from Sony & JVC and neither sported this facility.
Its getting rare on new DV ones as well.

[senu]

Originally Posted by lurcher

To be honest I think you will struggle to find a Hdd camcorder with av in , I had had models from Sony & JVC and neither sported this facility.
Its getting rare on new DV ones as well.

Agree:
Most HDD camcorders dont seem to expect an av input and most budget minidv ones have lost av in in recent years
THIS might be a good starting point if the archos seems too much hassle otherwise an MiniDV tape model used with LP recording (SD) will get you 90mins per tape
Have a look at similar past threads
AV-In without a camcorder?
Camcorder with AV input
Camcorder with AV in
HTH

[gravy1]

Thanks guys, I've looked at solid state recorders but most seem very little capacity (256mb) and are expensive so I guess it will have to be the archos (cheapest I've found is at http://www.newmp3technology.com £240) with it's increasing list of extras (dvr, portable dvr, codecs) needed to make it more usable. it will at least be useful to play films and music on the trip and I have an ATC cam with sd card for short recording (1 hour) but obviously the quality of the bullet cam will be of little use when we stop and record the sights so I guess I'll have to buy a camcorder as well. So just need a camcorder (cheap as poss) capable of recording 30 to 40 hours.

[rhubarbe]

Eh? You can buy solid state recorders from places like http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/ that will take a compact flash card as large as you like.

You can buy solid state camcorders that will take up to 16GB SDHC cards.

If you want to use the device to play music, films and record with a bullet cam you are inevitably going to end up with a device that will do no task well enough to justify its purchase price.

[rhubarbe]

Originally Posted by lurcher

To be honest I think you will struggle to find a Hdd camcorder with av in , I had had models from Sony & JVC and neither sported this facility.
Its getting rare on new DV ones as well.

If you read the page about this on dogcamsport you'll see that the Sony DCR-SR90e has av-in.

What do you say, Julian?

[senu]

Originally Posted by rhubarbe

If you read the page about this on dogcamsport you'll see that the Sony DCR-SR90e has av-in.

What do you say, Julian?

Not according to
THIS though
Besides the SR 90 is discontinued
Maybe the US spec or Sony have it wrong on their website ( wont be the first time) but generally AV in on a tape let alone HDD is getting very rare indeed

[rhubarbe]

We concluded that the dogcamsport web site was wrong.

[senu]

Originally Posted by rhubarbe

We concluded that the dogcamsport web site was wrong.

Sadly..
It would be nice to have an HDD camcorder with AV in but Sony/ Canon? Panasonic/ JVC are simply not listening are they?

[GaryB]

Originally Posted by senu

Sadly..
It would be nice to have an HDD camcorder with AV in but Sony/ Canon? Panasonic/ JVC are simply not listening are they?

They are, but there's a very good reason why it's quite rare. It might sound odd, but, as with many other things, you can blame the government for this. Camcorders with with an external input attract a much higher level of import duty than those without. In these days of wafer thin margins, adding a facility that very few people use wouldn't justify the extra cost.

[canarygsr]

Have alook at the JVC HDD recorders the 135/145/255/555/575/
the ones that end in 5 all have av input.
I just got a 555 ($500US) but am yet to test it

Im planing on doing the same thing (A bike trip across Europe) but i'm just not sure of what bullet camera to get. how much difference will the lines make ie 380.420,520...


I am looking at the KPC-HD230CWX/KPC-HD230WX that I saw for $109US