The Gizmophile

Don’t even think about buying the Panasonic SDR-H80K camcorder…  It’s a joke…

The resolution is at 704×480 versus the 720×480 offered in standard MiniDV and/or DVD video formats.

While it has worthwhile features, like optical image stabilization, 70x optical zoom, and SDHC flash memory compatibility…  It doesn’t compensate for the lack of 16 vertical lines of resolution.  Sure, you can futz with video editing software, and try to smooth out the jaggies…  But is it really worth it?  Most video editing software have pre-made templates for beginners and novices…  Why confuse those people with non-standard video resolution?

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I recently purchased and then promptly returned this camcorder, due to the quality of the recorded footage.

Stay tuned while I organize thoughts and research this camcorder, and the apparent interpolation of the pixels it captures.

To give you some idea of the quality of the footage, which was recorded to the internal 60GB HDD, take a photo and add the effect of mosaic, and reduce it to around .1 or .5 pixels in diameter.  Now, imagine that photo, but with motion, would you call that high definition?  If you attach an HDMI cable to this camcorder and plug it into say a Samsung LN40A650, you’d see this soft noise coupled with yellow/orange spots on a white wall with ample ambient light.

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This is one hell of a deal!  I’m pissed though since the 1 TB drive I bought for my Tivo just 6 months ago cost me 130 bucks.  Now you can get one for 75 bucks shipped.  I wish I could add another internal drive to my Tivo but I don’t think I watch enough shows to use up all 2 TB worth of recording capacity.

Here’s the link to the deal if you’re interested.

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Texas Fight App for the iPhone.

I don’t have an iPhone so this is no use to me but if you’re a Longhorn and got a fancy iPhone, give this app a try.  Now who’s going to make an app for us Blackberry users?  Anyone?

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I’ve seen this clip so many times but it never gets old.  It’s just too cool.  I probably have enough old PC parts to build one of these  but I don’t know about spending all that money on mineral oil.  Besides, it’s probably going to be a pain to dispose of it when the time comes… unless Autozone takes mineral oil.  Hmm… Should I build one?

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