Summary: Awesome Camcorder

Comment: This camcorder is awesome. The quality of video is great. It is very versatile and gets the job done.

Summary: Excellent

Comment: I think that the HD is in progress, because when I record in HD HQ, I can't edit the recorded material in the cam before finished the DVD.
I don't have been used all the facilities of the cam recorder.

Thanks.

Summary: Would highly recommend

Comment: For the product and technical illiterate, this is a great camera. For those who know a little bit more, it is an excellent camera. Easy to set up, use and edit. Placing the dvd directly into the camera is the best! Finalise it, and walk right over to the DVD player...Awesome!

Summary: Sony AVCHD means Sony Blu Ray disc player

Comment: The price of this SONY HDR-UX5 camcorder is a bit high. Also, you cannot just purchase this camcorder without also getting a Sony blu-ray disc player because you need a Sony blu-ray disc player to play the disc on your tv set if you are shooting with high def. Sony uses a video compression scheme called AVCHD to encode the high def video, so your disc with AVCHD video cannot be playback with regular dvd player. You can use the software that comes with the camcorder to playback the AVCHD video on your pc but I would rather watch my high def video on the big screen. On the pc, image size for AVC HD is 1440x1080 and MPEG2 SD is 720x480 which is about 4 in by 2 in. The quality of the video and audio is good and the 4M still photo is acceptable. In-door video is good if you have proper lighting. You can shoot at the screen of your tv set and get comparable result when you show the recording later on the tv set. Auto flash has three settings (high/normal/low) to give you sufficient lighting for still photo. I do not have problem shooting photo indoor.

The camcorder ($700) is expensive. On top of that, you need money for the accessories.

1. You have two choices of video format- HD OR SD. With HD, you should get the sony blu-ray disc player because the High def is AVCHD 1080i and can be playback on your tv with sony blu-ray disc player. Without a sony blu-ray disc player, you can playback the high def video by connecting the video camera to your tv set with the supplied component video cable. You will not be able to play "the disc" by itself using a regular dvd player if it is recorded with HD video. With SD, it is MPEG2 video. So, for SD, you can play your 8cm disc without the blu-ray disc player. For high def, you should get a Sony blu-ray disc player. I think of the Sony blu-ray disc player as an important accessory to the UX5.

2. Using the supplied battery(FH60), the recording time for SD (on SP mode) is about 75 min. I upgraded the battery to FH70 and I expect to get about 150 min. So I do not need to run back to my hotel to charge the battery when I was only halfway through shooting at the Great Wall. The mini dvd+rw disc records 30 min (single-sided, 1.4GB). If you want to record continuously on a single disc, consider using dvd+r DL. In SD (on SP mode), it is about 55 min.

3. If you record with dvd-rw disc, you can split or trim the video and that is all the editing function you got from sony. Or, you can use Nero 8 Ultra Edition to edit High Definition content in AVCHD format. Roxio easy media creator 10 and Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus will edit AVDHD. I don't know whether EMC 10 down-converted your footage. Certainly, it is much less expensive than doing it on the mac with Final Cut Studio 2. On the mac, you need Intel Core 2 Duo, Quartz Extreme graphics card, Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later, at least 2GB of RAM, Final Cut Pro 6 which is included in FCS 2. If instead, you use imovie '08, which is included with iLife '08; it will downgrade the high def to 480i. To me, it means it is not high def anymore.

So, as I've said before, AVCHD means get a Sony blu-ray disc player, shoot in high def and show your footage on the big screen like it is meant to be.

[...].

Summary: Pretty good but it could be better

Comment: I upgraded from a Sony DCR-HC30E that was 3 years old to this new HD camera and these are the pros and cons that I have found:

Pros:
* High definition. Pretty amazing quality on good light conditions even when conected to a 32" Samsung LCD TV that is only HD Ready (not full 1080i)
* 16x9 rather than 4x3 format
* Power adaptor is smaller (important when travelling)although the power cable could also be shorter and smaller.
* Faster transfer to PC (not at viewing speed like old tape camera)
* More efficient for archiving the original videos in external HD (about 1/3 of disk space).
* Direct one-cable connection to TV with Standard HDMI connector
* Simple PC Software provided to view AVCHD files and to convert into regular Video DVDs (although it can take the whole night to genereate a DVD of 15 min)

Cons:
* Much bigger and heavier than my old camera. Now I need to think twice before taking it for my next trip.
* Being realistic can only record 15 min instead of 1 hour of video, before changing the DVD.
* Editing AVCHD files require a lot of processing power. Now I need to upgrade both my PC and my video editing software.
* Not possible to record both high def and standard def in the same DVD
* All disks have to be finalized before being able to read on a PC, and this is a slow operation that can take up to 5 minutes. So better to transfer videos through USB if you haven't had to remove the DVD from the camera because you ran out of disk space.
* Battery duration. Battery supplied is NP-FH60 rather than NP-FH70 and sometimes won't last for 2 DVDs of 15 minutes each.
* Only as emergency photo camera since quality of photos is way below my old Canon Ixus 2 Mpixel camera.
* Photos taken during video recording are even worse
* Memstick is not provided, so unless you buy one, you cannot even try it as a photo camera.
* I bought a Mem stick of 1GB. This is the same capacity than the DVDs, but you cannot recrd video to the memory stick!
* Camera is slow to start recording since you press the record button, so you may loose the first two seconds. In addition it is slow powering up.
* No multi TV System. I bough in the US and therefore is NTSC only, but I want to use it in Asia Pacific and in Europe. Fortunately I have a multisystem TV.