Ultra HD televisions stole the show this year at CES, however none of the companies brought along a consumer-level 4K camera. Sony is a partial exception, showing off an extremely early prototype of a 4K Handycam that is claimed to be geared for the mainstream market.
Sony has outed a water- and dust-proof Handycam in Japan, similar to another video camera bound for Europe soon. The company suggests the HDR-GW77V can be left underwater for up to an hour at a depth of 16 feet, resists dust, and can survive up to a five-foot drop.
Sony UK has just introduced its latest Handycam, the GW55VE, which is waterproof in up to five meters (16.4 feet) of water. It can also withstand drops from 1.5 meters (nearly five feet) and resists dust. As a camcorder, the design runs on an Exmor R CMOS sensor capable of 1080p at a Europe-standard 50 frames per second.
Sony has stopped producing 8mm video hardware. The company expects that it will make final shipments of its two remaining products, the GV-D200 Portable Video Recorder, and the GV-D800 Video Walkman player in September. The company stopped selling video camcorders in 2008.
Sony has introduced its first external hard drive, the HD-PG5. Although the drive works as a general USB-attached storage device, it also provides a number of features specific to Sony's range of devices. Users can record HD video directly from their Bravia TV, transfer video files directly from a Handycam camcorder without using a PC, or play videos and photos through a PlayStation 3 console.
LG on Monday quietly disclosed a complaint it had launched against Sony with the International trade Commission to block sales of the PlayStation 3. The Korean company argued that the 160GB slim PS3 (also known as the CECH-2501A) violates a patent LG claims to hold for Blu-ray disc playback. The suit is believed in retaliation for Sony's action against LG in an attempt to keep its phones out of the market.
For 2011 Sony has released an extensive list of new camcorders with a sizable range of feature content, ranging from 2D to 3D video capability, to models with built-in projectors, to models equipped with hard disk drive-based storage to models with flash memory storage. Pricing ranges from just over the $200 mark, to the $1,500 neighborhood for the HDR-TD10 3D HD flash memory Handycam camcorder.
Sony on Wednesday showed off two increasingly rare standard-definition Handycam digital camcorders, the DCR-SX15E and DCR-SR15E. Both share a flip-out 2.7-inch LCD, and have Sony's SteadyShot image stabilization and face detection technologies, along with a 50X optical zoom. They differ in storage, as the SX15E relies on external Memory Stick or SD cards while the SR15E gets a built-in 80GB hard drive.
Sony this week outlined a plan to fight back against Apple by opening its own flagship retail stores. Starting with Sony Store Nagoya, the stores will imitate the multi-floor design of Apple flagships like Ginza and use large, spacious display areas divided by category. The first floor of the Nagoya store will focus on portable devices like Cyber-shot and Handycam cameras, the PSP, Sony-Ericsson phones, Walkman players and VAIO PCs; a second floor will focus on home theater equipment such as Blu-ray players and TVs.
Sony today announced the upcoming release of the largest capacity flash-based media storage cards in its recordable media range, with the 32GB PRO-HG Duo HX card and a 32GB PRO Duo card, both of which double the capacity of the current products. The former is made to work with Sony's Handycam camcorders, Alpha DSLRs and Cyber-shot compact cameras. The card has a 20MBps peak read speed and 15MBps peak write speed, or about three times faster than Sony's PRO Duo media card.
Sony today significantly ramped up the quality of its HD Handycams with two new models that promise fundamental changes. The HDR-CX500V and HDR-CX520V both have significantly upgraded visuals with a new backlit CMOS sensor. Moving the illumination away from the front gives either camera about twice as much light sensitivity, improving shooting in darker scenes. Both sensors are also upgraded to 12 megapixels and can shoot still photos at the high resolution in addition to 1080i widescreen video.
Sony has debuted a new high-definition camcorder, the HDR-TG5V, that is designed for travelers requiring lightweight gear. The Handycam features a Carl Zeiss lens, with 10X optical zoom, and captures 1920 by 1080 pixel video and four-megapixel still images. A titanium body and compact form factor contribute to the low weight. An integrated GPS antenna and NAVTEQ maps can be used to automatically geo-tag videos or images to keep a record of the exact shooting location.
In an unusual move, Sony this morning announced a pair of full-size HD video cameras that includes a model specifically built for home users truly serious about making videos. The Handycam HDR-FX1000 is built like a professional's camera with a separate microphone boom and manual controls normally left off of camcorders, including the iris opening, gain and white balance; it brings the price down chiefly by trimming features unlikely to be used at home, such as XLR mic inputs and DVCAM support.
Sony on Thursday issued a relatively surprising mid-year Handycam update through the CX12, a new mid-range camera. The handheld is Sony's first to use smile detection and does so to give videographers a hands-off approach to taking photos alongside video; the camera can automatically snap 10-megapixel still photos when it sees smiles without having to interrupt video capture. Like recent Cyber-shots, the CX12 can also prioritize those shots to take photos only of smiling groups or of adults or children. The Handycam can even take these photos in standby mode.
Sony this morning turned around its focus on traditional camcorders to competing against very small cameras such as Sanyo's Xacti line. The AVCHD-based Handycam TG1 is less than five inches tall, 2.5 inches deep, and weighs 10 ounces but is still capable of capturing a 1920x1080 picture. This makes it the smallest HD-capable camera yet, Sony says. While much of this size reduction comes from recording to Memory Stick Pro Duo cards, a 2.7-inch touchscreen offloads many of the controls that would otherwise occupy space on the main body.
As part of its efforts at CES, Sony has revamped nearly all of its Handycam models for the new year. The HD models now all receive face detection that auto-focuses on as many as eight human faces in a given scene and adjusts color balance to properly capture the subjects. For these HD cameras, more time is spent on encoding video for these pixels than the rest of the scene, Sony says. Topping the range, the SR12 (pictured) and SR11 are also the first Sony home cameras to use a new 5.7-megapixel sensor that nearly doubles to 10.2 megapixels for still photos alone or 7.6 megapixels while also recording video; this dual-record method can also be sustained on these models up to their storage limits. The SR10 uses a smaller 2.4-megapixel sensor that can take as many as five 3-megapixel shots in a similar mode.
