Clam Shells

Guy Meachin · April 7, 2005

Does anyone know of any good DVCam/MiniDV Clam shells suitable for playback? Preferably the cheapest!

Phil Rhodes · April 7, 2005

Hi,

Possibly the best was the Sony GV-D900, which had a 5.%" display and there was a dockable RF receiver for it. Unfortunately, they've been out of production for a while, although I believe you can get the DSR-V10 which is the DVCAM version of the same thing, and is practically identical.

The D900 was replaced with the D1000, which I consider to be inferior - it has a 3.5" display. As far as I can tell the only other functional differences are that it has a memory stick reader and the ability to turn DV into MPEG-1 sequences, but unless you have a burning desire to view low-res video on your PDA, this is largely meaningless. The other, slightly more significant thing it has is that the AV socketry isn't shared for input and output as it was on the D900. This might save a bit of plugswapping if you were to use it as an NLE feeder, although - somewhat understandably due to the size of the unit - you're stuck with one of those nasty four-pole jacks to an RCA breakout to get at the inputs. I'm not sure whether it lacks a Y/C input altogether or whether it's shared, but one doesn't appear on the breakout.

The one big thing the D900 won't do is E/E analogue to firewire - put composite into it and it doesn't come out of the 1394. This is a pain in the neck, because it stops you using it as a bridge between legacy tape formats like VHS and your 1394-based NLE. I'm not sure if this flaw is corrected on the 1000, but it's worth checking.

None of them are particularly cheap - I paid a rather steep £1450 for my D900 new, which is more than the much more capable DSR-11.

Phil

Edited April 7, 2005 by Phil Rhodes