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Article: Digital camcorders: limited appeal? (Electronics)
- Article from:
- Popular Science
- Article date:
- May 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Bonnier Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Manufacturers have introduced six new camcorders that record digitally and sport significantly higher price tags than traditional, full-featured, less-than-$1,000 analog machines. Instead of placing a continuous analog wave on tape, digital camcorders store images as ones and zeroes. They also use mini-Digital Video Cassettes (DVC) that are half the size of gram cassettes and one-twelfth the size of VHS tapes. But do the features these machines offer outweigh their increased price? Perhaps not yet.
Although digital camcorders produce sharper pictures than those from Hi-8 machines, the gain in resolution - to 500 lines from 400 - is not likely to attract ...