JVC Everio GZ-MG37 (30 GB) Hard Drive Camcorder
- HDD Size: 30 GB
- Recording Media: Hard Drive
- Optical Zoom: 32x
- Weight: 3 lb.
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User ReviewRead All Reviews »
great concept, but the video quality is not
Pros
Great concept! Extremely user-friendly. Powerful zoom. Extra features.
Cons
EXPENSIVE! Video quality is questionable. 16:9 files stretched back to 4:3 when played.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This camera is for you if you don't like messing with tapes and disks. But, don't count on it if you want the best video quality.
It took me several months of waiting for a good deal on some new technology. I heard enough stories about miniDV, DVD etc. from friends and I think those cameras are not really user-friendly and convenient... Got a good deal at Costco for this one, recently, and just before taking my son to the ocean, second time. It's a very user-friendly camera, it's just amazing, just like your point-and-shoot digital still camera. It does have manual mode(s), some useful manual tune-ups for the video and white balance, backlight compensation, etc. The zoom is optical, 32x!!!
The video itself is another story, though. It seems to produce a decent video quality under full daylight conditions. Low light shooting results in washed out colors, and quite a bit of CCD noise.
I don't quite understand why the user manual specs exclusively talk about video in 720x480 resolution and when played, 16:9 movies get "restored" to 4:3 on any player, and appear distorted, of course. It's somewhat misleading and I don't know if it's a user manual (intentional?) error or some firmware programmer screw up.
There is a free custom application, from some Everio user (programmer), available on the net (http://www.scs.unr.edu/~scottf/EverioUtility/), it attempts to change some bits in the file so it would open in 16:9 mode, and also renames .mod to .mpg. It's a very simple and useful tool, though.
I am still deciding whether to keep this camera as I like it very much, but somewhat repelled by its low video quality. There's another more expensive (at least x2 as expensive) 3CCD model that is getting good reviews. Mmmm... maybe.
The video itself is another story, though. It seems to produce a decent video quality under full daylight conditions. Low light shooting results in washed out colors, and quite a bit of CCD noise.
I don't quite understand why the user manual specs exclusively talk about video in 720x480 resolution and when played, 16:9 movies get "restored" to 4:3 on any player, and appear distorted, of course. It's somewhat misleading and I don't know if it's a user manual (intentional?) error or some firmware programmer screw up.
There is a free custom application, from some Everio user (programmer), available on the net (http://www.scs.unr.edu/~scottf/EverioUtility/), it attempts to change some bits in the file so it would open in 16:9 mode, and also renames .mod to .mpg. It's a very simple and useful tool, though.
I am still deciding whether to keep this camera as I like it very much, but somewhat repelled by its low video quality. There's another more expensive (at least x2 as expensive) 3CCD model that is getting good reviews. Mmmm... maybe.
