Zee News is a cheap and worthless channel full of stupid advertisements but more on that later in some other article.

Yesterday, there was a news about an incidence in Bhagalpur, Bihar. This town was made famous in the early eighties when police poured acid into the eyes of some undertrials.

Few days back, a woman in Bhagalpur had her gold chain snatched from her. She gave a cry and two passers-by ran after the thief. They caught him. The mob gathered. He was tied hand and foot and beaten by the crowd.

The police came. They joined in the beating and took the man and tied him by a chain to their motor-cycle and dragged him, till the chain broke.

This was videotaped and was broadcasted on National Television. This is nothing but cheap and attention seeking tactic of getting audiences. As a national broadcaster, your duty is to inform people about what happened, express outrage and ask for justice. Showing such videos is outright wrong. They should learn a way to tell story without offending sensitive audiences. The least they can do is to watch how CNN covered aftermath of 9/11.

I agree that the thief has committed a crime but it is not the duty of Police to punish him. This right still remains with court in so called Democratic India.

Shame to the police officers who performed this heinous act and shame on the Indian media. Please stop using suffering of a poor man as marketing ploy, to get attention and to stop them from changing channels.

As per latest news, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation have decided that it would be releasing movies exclusively on HD DVD, starting with Blades of Glory, Transformers and Shrek the Third.

Now it is clear that the Format War is heating up and hope that the picture above helps you to decide which one you support

Let’s wait and watch which of two technologies will replace standard DVDs.

Following are the factors which should be considered while finding that perfect Camcorder:-

1. Settle on the price you can afford — There are camcorders ranging from $300 to $3000 out there. You have to decide how much dough you are going to throw.
Camcorders based on newer technologies, such as hard drive or flash memory, are often more expensive than those with older formats and technologies, such as MiniDV tape.

For me, I have budget of $500 to $800

2. Storage Format — As mentioned above, there are several formats available in the world of digital consumer camcorders. The new camcorders use hard drive, Mini DVD, flash memory etc. whereas old camcorders mostly rely on MiniDV, even though the latter often offer better video quality. Some HD camcorders store their data on MiniDV tapes. But if you plan on editing your MiniDV footage, you’ll have to hook the camcorder to your computer via FireWire, not USB, and capture the footage in a video-editing program, all of which can be a massive time suck.

For me, I have shortlisted MiniDV and HDD (Hard Disk) as preferable format.
Why MiniDV — Pros are that it is supported by wide range of video-editing and video-effects software, and supposed to have better video quality among all. Cons are that lot of rewinding, forwarding may be involved to get to specific video segment.

Why HDD — Pros are compact camcorder designs, both video and still images can be recorded on one card (instead of on a cassette and a memory card), long recording times. Cons are that it is less supported by video-editing softwares, expensive than MiniDV camcorders.

3. Size of camcorder, controls and zoom — The subject says it all. If you plan to take camcorder on vacations, you’ll want something small and portable. But if you’re mostly using it for family events, you might not mind something a bit bulkier. For shooting sports, you might want to look for a lot of zoom, say 20X optical or more. Look for how powerful the optical zoom is, what kind of image stabilization is available (optical is better than digital or electronic), and the size of the camcorder’s LCD. LCDs sizes range from as small as 1.5 inches to as large as 3.5 inches. Some are touch screens (especially Sony’s), which feel more intuitive and direct than a joystick control or multiselector. Also check to see if your camcorder includes a viewfinder. Some manufacturers are doing away with them in order to produce more compact units.

4. Audio and Flash — All camcorders have built-in microphones, but the default may not be enough for you. Sometimes, due to wrong positioning of mike, camcorder picks up lot of noise. Pay attention to what audio features are offered. Some camcorders let you plug in an external microphone, which can improve the sound quality on your video footage. Make sure that you have an intelligent shoe or some sort of hot shoe on top of the camcorder for adding accessories. Accessories can help you expand how you use your camcorder. For example, you can attach a small light to your hot shoe to help you illuminate low-light scenes.

5. Technicalities — Camcorders has 3 major components viz. lens, imager, and recorder. As a consumer buyer you should be concerned with Lens and Imager (Image Sensor).

Lens – Every manufacturer has it’s own Lens quality and as long as you are sticking with good producers like Sony, Panasonic, Canon, you need not be concerned with Lens. They are all good.

Imager – This is where things get more complicated. Most camcorders use either a CCD images sensor or a CMOS sensor. Neither technology (CCD Vs CMOS) has a clear advantage in image quality, however, most camcorders use CCDs. The one big difference between manufacturers in upper-tier models is use of number of Imagers. Panasonic and JVC go towards the 3 CCD route, while Sony and Canon use larger single chips (1 CCD). Larger chips, invariably do better in low light.

Bottomline is that you should consider how many CCDs your camcorder has: one or three. If 1CCD, then what is the size of sensor chip. There isn’t huge differences between 1CCD and 3CCD camcorders when shooting in daylight. In low light, however, 3-CCD cameras generally perform better.

6. Hybrid camcorders — Comeon, nobody wants to carry camcorder and camera together. So hybrid camcorders come to rescue.
Check out what digital-still capabilities the camcorder has. If you plan on having it double as your digital camera, make sure it has at least a 3-megapixel sensor (with no interpolation). You’ll also want to have control over manual settings. And check to see if there’s a built-in flash. You, however, should not expect the same picture quality as you get from Digital Cameras.

So with all the above criteria in mind, go ahead and hit the internet. All the best to you.

Now, HD is very pleasant looking to eyes and I have seen my share in Best Buy. However, making HD movies using HD camcorder is different from watching them. You need lot of hardware and extra investment before buying that HD camcorder. HD video contains four times the number of pixels that standard-definition video does, and it’s much more heavily compressed.
You need a powerful computer with plenty of memory to deal with this extra data and compression. If you don’t have a new dual-core processor chips, 200GB hard drive and 2-GHz or faster machine, don’t think about HD.

On top of that, where are you gonna store that HD video. You cannot store it on DVD. There is no standard of HD, thanks to competition going on between HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. The products based on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats are very expensive, and will remain so for the near future. HD-DVD players, HDTV, HD-DVD drive are very expensive products at this point of time.

Considering all this, I have decided to stick to SD camcorder and as of now confused whether to go for traditional Mini-DV storage or Hard Drive storage. Hmmm… gotta research more….
Only one thing I can say is that in today’s electronics world, researching for any product is more confusing than David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”.

Source — Arsgeek