About a year ago I decided that my clunky old C-VHS camcorder had to be replaced by something smaller, lighter and much more up to date. So I set myself some criteria and started to search the internet.

So what did I want from my new camcorder????

1.An LCD screen
2.It had to be digital in one form or another
3.There had to be computer connectivity, preferably USB as I didn't have firewire at the time.
4.It had to be reasonably light and compact
5.It had to cost less than £400

So with these points in mind I set off and searched the internet and came up with the Sony DCR TRV245. Next I went into Dixons to get a hands on look at the camera and was very impressed with what I saw. OK there were some smaller cameras at the time, but they were twice the price and didn't meet all my criteria. So I went ahead and ordered on-line (I'm not silly I knew I could get it cheaper than dixons, I just wanted to see it in the flesh, so to speak).

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In the box
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The camcorder came packed in the box along with:

The battery
Power cable
USB cable
A/V cables
S-Video cable
Scart adapter
Remote Control with batteries
CD ROM – containing the drivers and a utility for getting your video onto the computer.
Instruction Book – Pretty large with instructions in English and French

So basically the only thing the camcorder didn't come with was a tape, which was disappointing as that was what was needed to record anything.


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Dimensions
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89mm x 101mm x 199mm
Weight : 800g
(taken from pixmania website)

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The Camcorder's features
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2.5” LCD

The screen is very clear, and can be tilted so that you can see what you're recording even if you're holding the camera above you're line of sight.

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Digital 8 format recording

Higher quality recording on tape. However the camera can also record on HI8 tapes which are slightly cheaper but will give lower quality recordings.

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InfoLithium Battery

The battery has a built in function that tells you how much recording/playing time you have left. Very useful if you ask me, there's nothing worse than guessing wrongly and your battery dying as you're recording a school play. The supplied battery gives approximately one hours recording time, but I bought a larger battery that gives up to 3 hours recording.

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Zoom

Optical zoom is 20x and digital is 700x. The picture quality with the optical zoom was fantastic, but when using digital zoom it degrades quite quickly. The actual zoom control takes a while to get used to, but I can now do pretty smooth zooms.

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USB Streaming

I found this a great disappointment. The picture quality transferred to my computer was quite frankly appalling and completely unusable. However, it did make a pretty reasonable, if bulky web cam.

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Firewire

This camcorder only has DV out. And I've not actually used it yet as I don't have a cable. But I hope to try it with my DVD recorder very soon.

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Remote Control

The remote control is satisfactory, and I suppose would be useful if you wanted to be included in the video or if you wanted to keep pausing as you were transferring video over. But for me it was another useless feature, I simply transfer everything to my DVD recorders hard drive and edit there.

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Still Photo Function

There is a function to take still photos, but quite frankly a £40 digital camera does a better job.

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Spotlight

The camera has a spot light on the front, which makes taking pictures in the dark easier. However, this gets very hot, and eats at the battery power.

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Ease of use
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The camcorder is remarkably easy to use. Simply charge the battery, insert a tape,remove the lens cap (important one that as it won't record until you do), push a simple button down to camera, point at what you want to record and press the red record button. There you go, your first recording started without even breaking a sweat.

There are other functions on the camera that take a while to get used to, but I never use any of the fades, wipes etc.

You then have plenty of connection options for transferring your recording to either VHS or DVD. I personally connect the camcorder to my DVD recorder via S-VHS and the picture quality is fantastic. However, you could also connect via the A/V cables (either on their own or with the scart adapter) or by firewire if your recorder allows it and of course you can connect to your computer via USB, if you can stand the picture quality.

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Price
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The lowest price I could find for this camcorder today was £384 including a free battery

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Value for Money
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When I bought this camcorder, it was excellent value for money. However, I would now say it's not such good value. You can get a better specification and smaller and lighter camcorder, for a lower price.

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Final Words
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This was a nice little camcorder in it's day, and still looks quite stylish and works very well. I would really recommend it to beginners that don't need fancy functions, or the computer connectivity.

Although I was disappointed with some of the functions, the actual picture quality is excellent and I recorded a school play lasting an hour today and my arm only ached a little bit.