14 DAY TRIAL // Casio's idea with the YouTube-friendly digital cameras that ease the posting of the video clips was followed by Sony, which yesterday announced the Net-sharing CAM.
As cnet blog crave.net said, you can use it to "videotape your pets fighting to Romanian dance music while on a trampoline", albeit there's plenty of US music that can do the trick.
Anyway, back to the Net-sharing CAM, it records MPEG-4 format clips with selectable qualities ranging from 15 frames per second to 30 frames per second and a generous 2.4 inch LCD. It can record about five hours of web-ready video footage on the proprietary Memory Stick PRO Duo media card, when recording with the default settings on a 2GB media card.
As with most camcorders, this one also doubles as a 5 megapixel still camera, but don't expect too much from it as most units have a disappointing quality.
Sony press release informs that "the Net-sharing CAM is pre-loaded with PMB Portable software", which "automatically runs when the device is connected to a compatible PC via the supplied USB cable, and will recognize "tagged" videos and photos." The PMB Portable pre-loaded software has pre-programmed menu buttons for direct publishing to web sharing sites, such as Cracklem and can also be programmed for blogs or "vlogs."
Power wise, the Net-sharing CAM uses a rechargeable Lithium Ion that gives it about 90 minutes of autonomy.
However, Sony's creation is far from being perfect, the lack of an optical zoom marring its usability. On the other hand, it's unlikely that future owners of the Net-sharing CAM will be that affected by this absence.
Expect to pay around $200 for the Net-sharing CAM, available beginning September 2007.
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