Pentax Optio 550 5MP Digital Camera w/ 5x Optical Zoom

The major pros of the Optio 550 are its overall image quality, 5x lens, battery life, feature set, and portability. The major downsides I've experienced are ISO noise, a slightly slow zoom and autofocus, and a delay in shutter release. A few other problems are ignorable or easily fixable in photoshop (vignetting) or can be largely fixed in camera settings (indoor photos).

Size and Build: I wanted a camera that is unobtrusive and the Optio 550 is certainly small enough. It is not a one-hand camera because of the weight, but it fits my hands (which I believe are slightly below average male size) very well. In addition, the build feels solid.

Image Quality: On the whole, very excellent. ISO noise is a problem (400 is unusable, 200 is marginal and will probably depend on your tolerance for grain, 100 and 64 are just fine) and so this camera isn't best for lots of shots in dark spaces, especially if the flash won't be able to illuminate the subject. In some of my images there has also been minor vignetting (slightly darkened corners) and according to dpreview.com, which has a good review, this occurs in wide-angle to half-zoom shots. Most of the time it is barely noticeable, and it is never a showstopper because a forum member at dpreview.com created a Photoshop file that can be used to easily correct the problem, which I have so far used a few times with good results... Cropping out the affected portion is, of course, another option. Otherwise, the image quality has been excellent, provided one sets and keeps the sharpness (and possibly also contrast, this seems to be more a matter of taste) down a notch from the default value. Outdoor images are, in my experience, sharp and detailed using the camera on full auto. Indoor images without good illumination are a bit harder for this camera, but forcing the camera to use ISO 64 or 100, in conjunction with the lower sharpness/contrast settings, will almost always give a very good photo. I am colorblind, so I will not offer an opinion on color accuracy. The comments of others on this aspect seem to be uniformly positive, however. The camera has three levels of JPEG compression, as well as a TIFF mode. The visible difference between ** and *** images is very difficult to see, but ** is about half the size. Users who aren't scrutinizing or heavily editing images will probably find that a very suitable compromise. The purist in me wants to use TIFF but my budget demands otherwise, so I usually stick with ***.

Battery life: Quite long. I was, for instance, able to go a week of casual picture taking (perhaps 15 pictures a day, no flash) with around two-three hours (all told) of nothing but reviewing pictures before it finally ran out. An AC adapter is not included, unfortunately, although a charger is.

The lens: The 5x optical zoom was a major selling point for me, and I have already appreciated its ability to get me up close several times. At this point in time, if you value small size and zoom capabilities, no other camera is its equal. It takes about 2 seconds to completely zoom in from a wide shot, which sometimes seems too slow. The Optio 550 has a 4x digital zoom also, but this type of zooming is best done after the fact with Photoshop or something else anyway, so I turned it off.

Feature set: Has full auto, full manual, an aperture priority and a shutter priority mode all of which operate as expected. Movie quality is adequate, but not great. The sound quality of annotations and movies is quite decent, however. Several filters (for color, softness, etc) are available which I haven't used. Modes for certain picture types (sunsets, snow, portraits, etc.). Of these, I've only used sunset and fireworks so far. The manual neglects to mention that fireworks mode sets a long shutter time, requiring the camera to remain motionless. 3D and panorama modes. The continuous shooting mode is about a frame per second at full resolution. The flash can be on, off, on with red-eye reduction, autoflash, or autoflash with red-eye reduction. The camera will display a histogram on the lcd live or after the fact. There is a 3x3 grid overlay available on the lcd to help framing. There is a mode for taking movies more slowly, allowing playback to appear faster, in addition to time-delay and time-interval settings. Two macro modes. More that I don't have space to detail.

LCD: Sharp enough, bright enough. No adjustable brightness settings, however. In bright sunlight it is, as others have noted, difficult to see. You can also elect to turn it off.

Miscellaneous: The autfocus is a bit slow, there is a slight but noticeable lag between pressing the shutter release and the actual picture, and these in combination with the fairly slow zoom will probably make some action shots very difficult to capture. Includes ACDSee software, and USB/NTSC cables. The SD card that comes with the camera is an anemic 16MB, so buying a 128MB or 256MB card is a necessity. I use the user mode on the camera to hold all my indoor shot settings, which means that I am always only a turn of a single knob away from alleviating indoor image concerns.

Conclusion: Given all the positives, I think the negatives are outweighed. I think the Optio 550 offers the best overall quantity of features and quality of images for a "take anywhere" camera of any that I researched before purchasing. The price is excellent as well, considering what it offers. I am very satisfied.

the optio 550 is a solid camera with one big advantage over the competition: 5x zoom in a compact package.

pros:

5MP resolution with good image quality.

beats competition with a 5x optical zoom in a compact package (dimensions are 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.6 in, weighing 8.7 oz.).

accurate color reproduction.

low image noise at low ISO setting.

allows a great deal of manual control.

live histogram in shooting and play modes.

very good macro capability.

spot metering.

long movie clips up to 10 minutes each!

convenient shooting priority play mode a half-press of the shutter brings you back to shooting mode.

decent night exposures with automatic noise reduction.

no color cast when using flash.

camera feels solidly built.

bright, high resolution LCD monitor with anti-reflective coating.

passive AF sensor helps with focusing.

impressive battery life.

price (compared to competition).

cons:

noise noticeable at ISO 100 and above.

some purple fringing/chromatic aberration visible.

some lens distortion from half-zoom to telephoto.

autofocus speed could be better.

shot to shot times not as fast as competition.

no slow-sync flash setting.

RAW format not supported.

metal body scratches easily.

high redeye occurrence.

vignetting visible from half-zoom and wider.

slow startup: >5 seconds.

fastest continuous shooting speed is only 1 fps.

slowest shutter speed available is 3 seconds.

cannot physically access the battery or memory card while mounted on a tripod.

plastic tripod mount.

16MB SD card is inadequate be prepared to shell out more $$ for more memory.

the batteries supplied are proprietary so add a few bucks to your budget for a spare.

the optio 550 has a very impressive feature set, better than competition 5x zoom, and 5MP of resolution. there's not one glaring omission but there are enough minor ones that it got a 4 star rating.

i hope this helps you in your buying decision. peace.

Buy Pentax Optio 550 5MP Digital Camera w/ 5x Optical Zoom Now

As someone who strted taking photographs 40 years ago with a Box Brownie, worked his way up through various SLRs, and basically lives & dies in public presentations on the basis of slides, I confess that I was VERY sceptical about going digital. The Pentax Optio has changed all that. I have been using this camera for about a month now, and my poor Canon F1 has stayed in its case. I am simply STUNNED with the quality of the image, the ease & accuracy of the "point and shoot" features, and the impressive array of options that Pentax offers me. Battery life seems excellent, the camera has survived a tough month in the field in high humidity/salt air being jostled and banged (and dropped at least once) in transfers from boats to dories to shore, and the 5x optical zoom lets me get reasonably close to my birds (it still isn't a "real" telephoto, don't be confused, but it beats the heck out of other digital cameras that I have played with). Downsides are that the enclosed 16mb card is a joke, I didn't even bother with it, get at least a 64mb & start shooting. The lens DOES take a while to extend, and there is a slight-but-noticeable delay between pressing shutter release & the actual image. This is annoying in an "action" setting. In addition, the viewscreen, while brighter than I expected, is invisible in bright sunlight. The biggest problem with this (the optical viewfnder is just fine for actually taking photos) is that messages like "memory card full" may not be conveyed to you unless you look really closely -I lost half a dozen pictures from not paying attention. Overall I am VERY impressed with this camera, it is light, portable, versatile, gives me very high quality pictures, and seems tough enough to stand up to a demanding life on off-shore seabird colonies. Go for it.

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I purchased the Optio 550 to replace my original Kodak DC215. I was looking for a camera with decent Optical zoom, good photo resolution, and not something so big I would dread carrying it around.

So far I have been VERY pleased with this camera. It weighs significantly less than the Kodak, and is a good deal smaller too. It's a little big to put in your pocket, but I was able to get a reasonably small camera case which will work very well.

The pictures I have taken so far have all been very good quality, and you can't beat the 5MP resolution :) Connecting it to my computer was a snap, and the menus and options while a little bit criptic, provide easy access to lots of features.

I only have 2 complaints with this camera. 1) You will DEFINITELY need a larger memory card. The bundled 16MB card will only hold 4 pictures at the highest quality setting (below TIFF). However, this is true with every single digital camera I was looking at so I can't hold it against Pentax. 2) The movie mode does not support Optical zoom, only digital zoom. I have no idea why they did this, but for some reason you cannot use the optical zoom while shooting movies. Granted, this is a still picture camera, and I will probably seldom use the video mode, but it seems to be a very strange oversight.

I would DEFINITELY recommend this camera to anyone who wants a relatively easy to use camera, that takes very good pictures.

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Pros: Very compact for its specs; comprehensive feature set; high-quality images; long battery life.

Cons: Autofocus speed average at best; continuous-shooting mode only 1fps; no slow-sync flash setting; no RAW mode.

I recently brought the Pentax Optio 550 and this camera has a wide range of possibilities. THe colors are vibrant, the 5x optical is awesome, the 5.03 mexapixels are nice, and the wide range of options is awesome. The microphone records at 64 kpbs and can record somewhat decent clips. I have only taken 100 or so pictures, but most of them have turned out very nice. Only two possible down sides, though they are easily compensated for. First of all the noise levels at 400, and even 200 can be hideous. Just go to user mode and set the ISO to 64 or 100. Then set the Exposure Compensation to +1 or +1.3. Secondly, the movie mode is not of high quality, as it only records 320 * 240, however, given that this is a digital Camera, and not a video camera that is acceptable I have two 256 MB lexar card and those are definitely useful.

Sony DSR-PDX10 Professional 1/4.7" 16:9 3CCD DVCAM Compact Camcorder with 3.5 inch LCD Monitor

Quite often I notice many reviewers associate the word "professional" with this camcorder, which is frustrating since this camcorder is not "professional"; it is a professional consumer (prosumer) camcorder. I own this camera by the way, but I am neither a consumer (respectively) nor am I a professional; I have been to Radio-Television-Film school, which has allowed me to become a photojournalist, but I would never consider myself a professional I have chosen to be this way because becoming a truly professional videographer slash cinematographer requires some extensive knowledge and experience two things which I don't have, and two things which you probably don't have either since your on Amazon's website looking at the Sony DSR-PDX10, and reading a review on the camera from someone who is on the job, but obviously has nothing better to do at the moment.

Nonetheless, I will attempt to divulge your wonders about this camcorder. As of the current, I have owned a PDX10 since the spring of 2004 which I suppose is something like a year and-a-half to be not exact. And since I am much better at noticing negative things, I will start with those bad things about Sony's little three-chip camcorder, the biggest problem being the chips themselves. The three charged coupling devices in this camera are all 1/ 4.7 inches in diameter (almost 1/5 inches in diameter) making these chips the smallest ones in the prosumer market. What does this mean exactly? Well it means that the camera is absolutely terrible in low light shooting conditions. It also means that the image is highly susceptible to noise a thing which wouldn't seem so bad if it were as aesthetic as film grain, but alas, this is interlaced digital video the farthest thing from celluloid. Small CCD's also mean that the range of optimal exposure levels for this camera is about as narrow as the mind of a narrow-minded person; thus, the image will yield the best quality when the lighting is bright and even. Because of this, the PDX10's image will look its best when the camcorder used for outdoor shooting situations (except at night).

This seems like a terrible camera now doesn't it? Not very professional at all, you say. Well, before you write this camera off, I must mention that the PDX10's image at its best is quite incredible for this amount of money. And to mention the unmentioned, this is the only camera in its class that will record in true widescreen (16:9) ratio the PD170 (Sony's next-best prosumer DV camcorder [$3,500]) can't even do this. Most cameras which claim to record in 16:9 either crop the top and bottom of the 4:3 image, or they squeeze the initial recorded image by electronically changing the aspect ratio (but not the physical aspect ratio) of the pixels, which will later be "stretched" out when viewed on a 16:9 television this process is physically degrading to the recorded image. Personally, I always record in 16:9 because when viewed on a 4:3 ("full screen") TV via DVD, the over-sampled image looks great, and is also future proof for viewing on 16:9 televisions in "full screen". In fact, the PDX10 has been a choice camera for underwater photographers who want to have the ability to shoot in 16:9 while keeping a small form factor; because of the ambient lighting found underwater, this camera will yield an exceptional image in such conditions (during the day, of course).

When I purchased the camera, I also purchased both wide angle and telephoto lens adapters that thread on to the front of the camera's fixed lens quite annoyingly. With the 2x telephoto lens, there is serious chromatic aberration (a condition which is best described in words as blue-ish slash purple-ish hazes of light around subjects displaced in the depth of the image) that worsens the further you "zoom" in. This condition is not so apparent, if at all, wile just using the fixed lens, but then you will be limited to a 12x optical telephoto range. Digital zoom is available, and is broken up into two areas of intensity; the first level is 24x, which isn't so terribly bad as other digital zooms, mostly because the CCD's have roughly one million pixels scattered about each of their tiny 1/ 4.7 inch surfaces, and the resolution of NTSC DV only asks for about half of those pixels to show a proper image. The second level of digital zoom is available also, but I wouldn't advise using it unless you're spying on somebody whose one eighth of a mile away from you.

A wide angle adapter is nice to have, but I wouldn't suggest using it if you are planning on zooming in a lot, otherwise you will have to be constantly adjusting your focus. Particularly helpful when using these fixed-lens cameras is an auto focus feature, or more importantly, a push-auto focus feature. For example, you may set the camera to manual focus, and if you don't feel like messing with the focus ring on the front of the camera, you may push a button on the side of the camera that will automatically adjust the focus without having to switch into auto focus mode. There is even a third way to focus, and that is via the LCD flip-out screen, which happens to be touch-sensitive. Just hit tap the screen in the area you want the camera to focus and it will do so makes rack focuses easy as h-e and two hockey sticks. All three modes of auto focus are very fast; Sony is known for having the best auto focus for video cameras, and this camera is no exception as it was originally designed to be Sony's flagship consumer model. Probably my second overall disappointment with the camera is the manual focus ring that has a naturally sluggish feel to it; I much prefer the precise auto controls found on Panasonic's fixed-lens cameras, which closely mimic the feel of a mounted lens. The PDX10's focus ring gets even more sluggish in cold weather, as the back side of the metal ring is coated with an anti-abrasive lubricant whose viscosity decreases congruently with the clime's temperature.

Since I'm on the subject of temperature and climate affecting the performance of the camera, I'll have you know that even the most extreme conditions for humans will not affect the performance of the PDX10. It is known that both altitude and temperature affect electronics in general, and when exposed to the most extreme conditions, they might cease to even operate. Such was not the case when I went skiing in Colorado during late December of last year. I decided to take the PDX10 on the slopes one day, and mindful of the temperatures, loaded the camera with a DVCAM cassette just to test what the medium was all hyped up to be. Somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 feet at single digits Fahrenheit, I blasted down the slopes holding the small camera close to the ground with idle-as-possible hands; it was fun. Sometimes when you're skiing, within all of those layers of clothing, you kind of loose perspective on how cold it really is outside. Well, looking down at the PDX10's flip-out LCD, I noticed that something was wrong it looked like the shutter speed was low. But after skiing a little bit more, it finally hit my mind it was so cold that the pixel refresh rate had increased, or the liquid in the crystal display was getting too cold. That's cold. One of my friend's digital cameras wouldn't power up that's cold. I began to wonder whether or not my footage would come out ok, but when we all got back to the lodge and played the tape, it was just perfect. Maybe DVCAM does have some redeeming properties whenever you're 12,000 feet above sea level, freezing your rear end off, and happen to be taping something.

On other issues of durability, I would like to in fact mention more issues of durability. It just so happened that this camera, in an unfortunate series of events, was catapulted to the ground in such intensity that the lens hood became permanently distorted, the corner of the LCD flip-out panel gouged a scar into the side of the camera body, the original shotgun microphone was rendered snapped-in-half, the high capacity battery was dislocated from the camera body, and the optical sensor for the focus ring was knocked out of place from the impact. Fortunately, I was able to re-attach the battery and continue filming. I was able to fix the focus ring problem myself by taking apart the camera and doing some rudimentary drilling. I don't have any problems with the camera to this day (this happened a year ago). I have worked with other cameras of the like, and can say in confidence that the PDX10, and all Sony prosumer video cameras, feel more durable than the Canon GL series cameras, as well as the Panasonic prosumer cameras not to say that it is more durable, it just feels durable and has proven to be so. So if you have any doubts of durability, I can tell you in all honesty to not have any doubts of durability when considering the PDX10 and its durability.

What you are buying when you in fact buy a PDX10 is a very high-end consumer camcorder that has the ability, in some applications, to be a quasi-professional video camera. If you are interested in filming extreme slash outdoor sports, I would highly recommend this camera for its durability, portability, great auto features, great image stabilization, and better-than-consumer results which will impress the people who see your footage, and might even trick them into thinking that it was a professional camera. If you're in the market for a camera to use for event videography, I would suggest investing in a camcorder that is shoulder-mounted (Canon XL series are a bit front-heavy by the way) and looks good in various lighting conditions (look for a rating of 1 lux or lower), and has readily accessible manual controls. If you're just a very wealthy or eccentric person who would like a video camera to document their own realities, you'd probably be attracted to the new HDV camcorders. If you are buying this camera to make a bloody film or documentary, find out how much it will cost to rent a professional camera and hire a professional to operate it that will give you the best results. Final word: the Sony DSR-PDX10 could be akin to a very large sink with a disproportionately small drain, if that makes any sense.

I teach videography and have tried many different camcorders before deciding on the PDX10 as the best compromise between price, easy of use, and professional quality.

The best feature of the PDX10 is the dual-XLR audio inputs and good quality microphone normally included with the camera. Cheaper consumer cameras often don't even let you adjust audio levels, even if you did add an third-party XLR input.

Video quality is both great and poor--that is, great when there's plenty of light and poor when you're in low light or even not-so-well-lit ordinary indoor situations. I shot a well-lit scene with the PDX10 and, right next to it, a $20,000 Sony camera with a $5,000 lens, and nobody yet has been able to tell which is which when I show them the footage. (Interestingly, the more expensive professional camera also did poorly in low light conditions.)

I've heard some people say they preferred the old Sony PD-100A, which was the PDX10's predecessor. However, I have both and appreciate the many improvements to the interface and slightly better color quality of the PDX10.

The closest competitor to this is the Panasonic AG-DVC30, which has better low light performance but doesn't have as good 16:9 support. More importantly to me, the PDX-10 records in DVCAM format (on regular mini-DV tapes) which puts more data on the tape for each minute of recording. I have found to my great dismay that the regular DV format is VERY prone to errors, dropouts, and rapid tape degradation. I can't tell you how many of my projects have been ruined or nearly ruined by problems with DV! Since I switched to DVCAM-only hardware in my studio, I have NEVER had a visible dropout or data error, even when re-using previously recorded tapes (which saves money, and which only a suicidal videographer would try with regular DV).

Bottom line: Buy the PDX10 unless you need to shoot in low light, in which case you should get a Panasonic AG-DVC30 (and splurg on best-quality tape) or save up the extra money for a Sony PD170, which also has good low-light performance. The PD170 also has more bells and whistles (such as selectable frame rate and more switches so you don't need to use menus as often), but for my money I'd much rather have two PDX10's (or a PDX10 and a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills) than one PD170.

Buy Sony DSR-PDX10 Professional 1/4.7" 16:9 3CCD DVCAM Compact Camcorder with 3.5 inch LCD Monitor Now

This camera is great if you are on a low budget. In fact, as of this date, it doesn't get better. Everyone has mentioned the greats... tons of digital controls over your image, a touch screen, and xlr ins. That's great. If it makes a huge difference to you, the CCD chips are small, and thus a low lux camera. So if you are planning lots of low light, it may be worth it to spend more on more. The digital controls are great, but they are nothing like manual shutter speed and fstop. This is a great camera for the price. It has captured beautiful images for me.

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The Panasonic performs much better in low light and has more accessible manual features, and it's cheaper. I'm not saying that the Sony is a bad camcorder, though.

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ESTA CAMARA DE VIDEO SONY PDX 10 ES MUY BUENA, PARA FILMAR EN CONDICIONES DE POCA LUZ, SUS MICROFONOS SON DE BUY BUENA RECEPCION, SU PANTALLA GRANDE PERMITE VER SON MEJORES DETALLES LAS IMAGENES, LOS COLORES DE LAS IMAGENES PERFECTAS. NO LE PIDE FAVOR A LA PD150-PD170.

MUY BUENA VIDEOCAMARA.

Marcelo Mullo Torres.

Ecuador

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Microphone Recorder

We have had one of these little mics for years. I used it as a travel toy in the car and on airplanes (though it is hard to hear it over the hum of the engines). My kids have played with it on and off. They enjoy saying silly things and then hearing their voice played back.

Thanks guys, the shipping was fast and it reminds me where I'm parked :) handy little thing.. Initially bought it as a present but decided to keep it lol

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This toy is a lot of fun for the price. My kids played it with it for almost a week, which is more life than the majority of their toys get.

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I bought a few dozen of these to hand out at a 7 year old's birthday party. All the kids seemed to get a kick out of them and the gifts were a big heat so I couldn't be happier.

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I'm not sure if this was meant to be a toy or not, but the kids seem to like it so thats all I can ask for. Also, the clarity of the recording isn't half bad for such a small device.

Emerson Portable Radio CD Player with Cassette Recorder (PD6548SL)

• Portable CD player with AM/FM stereo radio and cassette recorder
• AC/DC operation with detachable AC cord included
• Wide-range 3-inch speaker
• Records directly from radio or CD player
• CD-R/RW playback compatible

I bough this radio as a gift. I wanted to get a small radio, CD, and tape player that was easy to use for non-techie's. So far this item seems to have fit all these needs. It works well for radio listening and has a simple and easy to operate CD player. The tuner for the Radio is analog which is not that big of a deal as the multitude of buttons gets confusing for the non technical person. In addition the CD is easy to use and did not have to explain it to the user at all.

Pros: -Easy to Use

-Radio, CD and Tape

-Portable

-OK Sound quality

-Inexpensive

Cons: -Not for a techie or audio file who likes lost of controls and/or heavy bass

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I just bought one of these and I must say for $30 I'm pleasantly surprised!

My children and wife use this when they play in the backyard and it plays loud and clear.

CD's,tapes the radio they all perform well.

So far about 8-10 hours of use using all sources and our first set of batteries is still going strong.

While not high fidelity sound (nor does it pretend to be) it's great for background music that's clear.

While the batteries do last long, you will need 8 C cells. That's a lot for a small stereo. But they also provide 12 volts DC so I guess it does'nt have to strain using less voltage.

We like it!

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I have been happy with the quality of the sound on both radio and playing CDs. I got it specifically to play baby music, so I am not critical about bass or surround sound, etc. We have only used it plugged in so I can't say how well it runs on batteries or comment on battery life. It does what I need it to do and has a nice design, even though it is small enough to go unnoticed in any room.

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I purchased an inexpensive CD player to use on occasion while visiting relatives. The CD player is easy to use. The quality of sound is fair. There is no way to adjust treble or base; therefore, it sounds a bit tinny. The radio reception is nill. I can only receive the signal from a few of the local radio staations & then the clarity is poor. I have not had occasion to use the cassette player. That being said, I primarily intended to use player for CD's so it is okay. I have only used the AC adapter so I cannot comment on battery life. I was dissappointed with the overall quality. I hope durability is better because it gets heavy use.

I wanted to give an update in regard to this product after 7 months of use. My CD player no longer works. The cassette player broke after being used twice. The radio is of no use. This product was a waste of my money. The CD player did play classical music well & was easy to use. I used the CD player for audio books from the library. While CD player was used extensively, it remained stationary & was well taken care of. It will be sorely missed.

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So far so good. I own a preschool and use this daily playing cassettes, CDs for the kids, and listening to the radio on my own time. Everything is working fine. It could be louder because of my needs, but probably fine for anyone not needing to hear it over laughing and silly noises from several "dancing" children. I am pleased, given the price and overall ease of use.

Mustek DV3000 Multi-Function Digital Video Camera w/1.5-inch LCD and 2x Digital Zoom

This camera is a good one to start out with. I got this camera back in 2005 for a trip to Switzerland, Italy, and France, and it got the job done. It was my first digital camera, and insanely easy to use.

The picture quality is not the best, and the difference between the middle and highest resolutions is barely noticeable save in how much space is taken up on your memory card. Over time, the camera itself will most likely begin to break. Mine has started to separate down the middle, but the camera still works the same as the day I purchased it and this problem can easily be fixed with superglue.

I do not recommend this camera for someone who is looking for high-quality images. While it is a nice camera for home and personal use, the overall quality of the images is not great, and I find myself looking at other digital cameras, possibly a Canon, for my next trip that have a higher resolution and that have image stabilization. Another thing to note is that this camera has to be held very still when taking a picture. Movement of any kind often results in a noticeably warped image. The length of time the camera takes to actually take the picture definitely has something to do with this. It takes between six and twelve seconds, depending on resolution, to take a picture. The battery life itself is good, lasting about three hundred pictures before I had to change my batteries.

I have no real complaints about this camera. It is a good, basic camera with few options, and the fact that it doesn't have a flash really is not a problem once the camera adjusts to the light. When I was in the Vatican, cameras with flashes were not allowed, and I found that once my camera adjusted to the light, I could take pictures that were just fine. This even in spite of the fact that many of the rooms there are barely lit in order to preserve the artwork.

I recommend this camera to anyone who is just starting out in the realm of digital photography. This camera is perfect for anyone who is looking to take basic pictures and shines as a personal camera. The images I took when abroad are of good quality (though not the best), and the majority of the images turn out rather clear.

I bought this camera and was very happy with it. It took clear pictures and was very easy to use. Although it was small in size it got the job done. Then, after less than a month of using it, it simply stopped working. It wouldn't turn on, the LCD screen wouldn't show anything, and when it rarely did turn on, weird sounds came from it. I took good care of it, didn't drop it or anything of the like. After repeatedly calling Mustek customer service and finally getting help from them, all they said was that it had a malfunction and to ship it in, but we never got a new camera. It was horrible service, and a cheap camera.

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Well it's an ok camera except for the fact that can't take videos at 6:30 PM cause it gets to dark, and if I want to take a video in my house the blinds have to be open and the lights have to be on and it has from 5:00 AM to 6:20PM. Other than that it's an ok camera. The pictures are the most clearest, and the videos are sortta fussy.

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I recently purchased the mustek dv4000 and I hate it, the pictures are awful! I used the highest quality setting and got very poor results, the only thing I do like about the camera which is why it even got one star was the fact that the digital recording I took came out OK, but digital still pics are awful and I'd advise folks to look elsewhere and not spend their money on this one. I'm sending mine back! I'm new to digital photography but I know on the highest quality setting, the photo quality shouldn't be grainy. High quality settings yielded low quality pics on mine....Anyone out there have a better experience? Could I be doing something wrong?

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I only use the digital camera capabilities for the Mustek DV 3000. This small digital camera is great for quick pictures that are going to be used for digital purposes and the software that comes with the camera is eay to use. Even the novice computer user can upload pictures with this camera. The downside if no flash and the video capabilities seem to capture very dark video unless outside or in a very extremely high light area. So I use this camera to take quick pictures of my kids or for items I am selling online, so this camera is very functional for it's quick digital camera functions.

D-Link DAP-1522 Extreme 4-Port Gigabit Dual-Band Wireless-N Bridge/Access Point

I've configured the DAP-1522 as a wireless bridge to a DIR-655 (2.5Ghz). I've got a PS3 and a Satellite DVR connected to two of the four ethernet ports on the DAP-1522. I have configured the 1522 to use WPA2 security as well.

Setup was a little tricky, but it was my fault not the fault of the 1522. If you choose to manually configure the 1522 be sure you follow the directions and connect the 1522 to your computer and with your computer configured to use a static IP address in the 192.168.0/24 subnet. I mistakenly had my computer still trying to use DHCP when connecting to the bridge and it took me a little while to figure out what was wrong. My computer couldn't get an IP address and so Windows kept assigning an address from a different subnet, so I was not able to establish a connection to the DAP-1522's default 192.168.0.50 IP address.

The 1522 works as expected. Performance is very good with a max of 162Mbps through 3 drywall walls (approx 40 ft) to my entertainment center as displayed on the DIR-655 console. I haven't run any local network bandwidth tests to verify the throughput yet, but I can easily stream HD content without blocking between a PS3 and a wired media server. Previously I was using the PS3's internal 802.11g network interface, and HD media was not viewable as it overwhelmed the 11g link.

I did notice that the orientation of the DIR-655 and the DAP-1522 did make a difference in the reported signal strength and data rate as seen from the DIR-655 console. So after you've gotten things to work, don't forget to run some experiments to determine the best position for the devices to get the best performance possible.

It might bear noting that I'm technically proficient, and I've used several access points and switches over the years. This was my first D-Link purchase in years only because Linksys's reputation has become pretty terrible. Overall, this piece of equipment is GREAT, with a HUGE caveat that the range SUCKS.

I used this router for about 3 weeks before I replaced it with the D-Link DIR-825 because of the range problem. The 1522's user interface isn't bad. I had no problem configuring this switch to do everything I wanted. I did not experience any dropped connections or dropped packets. Granted 3 weeks isn't a terribly long time but I never had to power cycle the Access Point. It just worked and did a great job.

I should have known that since the DAP1522 uses an internal antennae the range would not be comparable to my old Linksys WRT54G. I am intentionally trying to share my wireless with my neighbors, and the DAP1522 is unusable, and I'm not exaggerating, 30 feet away. To be fair, there are 3 (non-thick, normal wood) walls between the DAP1522 and the laptop but still 30 feet? On the other hand, this could be a major selling point. Scared that your neighbors might be stealing your wireless signal? Just buy a DAP1522!

If you have a large house or coverage area, this isn't going to cut it. But if you live in a small apartment, this thing is perfect. For anyone who needs better range, I'd recommend the slightly more expensive DIR-825.

PS For anybody who's confused this bridge/AP is essentially a switch plus an access point. It lacks the "router" capability and WAN port that similar pieces of equipment have which make them routers. For the typical person, you only need a bridge/AP if you already have a router and want to add a wireless access point to your network.

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I purchased to pair with the DIR-655 router and a DSM-750 media extender, both from Dlink. Depending on how you feel, this product could be anywhere from a 1 5 star item. The thing works great, which is the most important aspect to me. However, I would say that the range is less than excellent, thus a half star off for that. Another half star off because the reset button is pretty much useless. I'm taking the other star off for it being a massive pain in the butt to get it working in bridge mode.

AP mode is easy to set up. All you have to do is set the switch to AP on the back and connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable. You should then be able to access the configuration page by typing in 192.168.0.50 in your web browser. You can then set up the wireless broadcast as you see fit (enter in an SSID in the box (different from your router for a separate broadcast) use a static IP address, set up the IP address of your router as the gateway address, etc). You can also update the firmware.

Bridge mode is a completely different matter. Theoretically, you should be able to press the WPS button on your router and then press the button on your bridge and it will connect automatically (probably still helps to connect via Ethernet cable first so you can access the config page). Maybe that worked for some people, but it did not work for me. I tried push button connect, tried connecting using pin numbers, tried manually setting everything up, but nothing worked. I was tempted to think I had a defective unit, but it worked fine in AP mode, so I was sure the thing was functioning properly.

Here is how I configured it to make it finally work in bridge mode. First, I reset this and my router to factory defaults. I set the switch on the back to bridge mode. I connected the bridge to the router via Ethernet cable. I turned on the router and then the bridge. I set up the router as before broadcast in 802.11n only mode, 40MHZ and WPA2 (AES encryption), which enabled me to achieve 300 mbps network speed. I then went to the config page for the bridge. On the wireless set-up, I manually set it up to match the router. I selected the static IP. I left the SSID box blank and used the site survey to select the wireless connection from my router. I then de-selected the clone MAC box. As if by magic, the stupid thing finally connected wirelessly, and i have been pleased with its performance since. I was even able to unplug it and set it up in another location, and it was still able to connect.

Read Best Reviews of D-Link DAP-1522 Extreme 4-Port Gigabit Dual-Band Wireless-N Bridge/Access Point Here

Certainly wish I'd had the kind of wonderful experiences with this unit that others have enjoyed. Unfortunately, both of the units I've received have been DOA: Neither would boot up in Bridge mode. In both cases, putting the mode selector into Bridge position results in both the Bridge and AP lights coming on (not blinking) and staying on.

To make matters worse, I've spent over 6 hours with D-Link's grossly incompetent product support (generally overseas folks hard to understand, in addition to being nearly completely ignorant of both the products and the general technologies). On the third call for the first unit the tech decided that the problem was with my D-Link DIR-825 router (nevermind that the DAP-1522 wouldn't even boot in Bridge mode) and ended up totally trashing the configuration of the wireless router! (Thankfully, I had taken the initiative to back up the DIR-825 configuration before following the tech's misguided instructions.)

Finally adding insult to injury after spending 5 hours with the tech support at the ("D-Link is here to help") support number included with the unit, I was informed I was calling the wrong number for this particular product. Unfortunately, the tech at the "correct number" for the DAP-1522 was every bit as ignorant as the tech at the original support number (seemed to think the problem was with my cable modem!). Tier 2 support didn't even seem to know there was a difference between bridge and AP modes or that there was a switch on the DAP-1522 to select the mode (I had to have her pull up the Quick Installation Guide on the screen and show her the switch).

I truly wish this thing worked, but after having received two defunct units in a row and spending the better part of a full day on the phone with incompetent (and nearly unintelligible) support staff, I've pretty much given up.

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I already have a wired router (D-Link DGL-4100 Broadband Gaming Router, 4-Port Gigabit Switch), so I bought the DAP-1522 to add Draft-N wireless connectivity to my existing wired network, through its ability to act as an access point. It is small, light, and has no projecting antennas, so you can put it just about anywhere. The built-in browser-based wizards made setting up the network easy I chose to go with the 5 GHz band to avoid interference from our cordless phone and microwave oven, and to limit the network to draft-N devices only and the results are really impressive. We carried a laptop all over the house, including upstairs in a two-story house, and it got the maximum signal strength everywhere. Internet access seems to be every bit as fast as over a wired connection, as I would have expected since draft-N connections are supposed to be quite a bit faster than the internet connection itself (via cable modem). Highly recommended!

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Olympus DS61 Digital Voice Recorder

This recorder has a lot great features. However, it lacks any kind of edit functions, such as erase, overwrite, insert and append. These are essential for a recorder at this price point.

good product overall. I also have the Olympus ws-331M, which is much less expensive. I don't notice much of a difference in quality. Were I to do it again, I would stick with the less expensive 331M. Please note that I haven't used all the functions yet so perhaps there are some hidden gems.

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Works fine. $200 seems too much for what it does though. You can't increase play speed if you have noise filter on.

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I really like this device. So easy to use, compact and very senitive mic. It is great!

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This is a great DVR! The sound quality is amazing! The VCVA feature works awesome. I spoke all the way across the room and this recorder picked it right up. The price is steap but you get what you pay for!

Polaroid PRDVDPR050S DVD+R 4.7GB 120-Minute 16x Recordable DVD Disc, 50-Pack Spindle

These seem to work good so far no bad discs. all burns have had no errors. would recommend to others

These were a great value and I had no issues with any of them upon burning many dvd's. I would recommend for anything.

Buy Polaroid PRDVDPR050S DVD+R 4.7GB 120-Minute 16x Recordable DVD Disc, 50-Pack Spindle Now

Just started using these after much success using the Memorex DVD+R 16 x Cool Colors 50 pieces Wheel Cap with Handle, I haven't had an error on these and close to the end of the pack. Viewing quality and speed rate is good everytime. Highly reccommended, in my opinion.

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Why spend more when you can spend less? This product works great, but does not have the nice writing surface. But, hey, it's inexpensive.

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this is a 50 pack of polaroid dvd+r recordable dvds . i have used over half the pack with no problems . fast delivery and the best price for a 50 pack . will reorder again

AUDIOVOX MP3 PLAYER 4GB COLOR TFT DISPLAY

• RCA 4GB Flash Memory Digital Media Player w/2 LCD Display/FM Radio/Voice Recording M4304

I got this for my son because it was cheap but cool-looking and he's not old enough (and I'm not rich enough) for an ipod. We had no trouble whatsoever loading music and a few photos. Don't bother using the "easyRip" software that comes on the unit...a total waste of time. If you have Windows Media Player it's easy enough. The unit has to be connected to the computer to delete stuff. The screen is a decent size, good picture quality. On most of the downloaded songs it displays the CD cover when the songs starts playing (but not for songs ripped from CDs). The FM radio picks up tons of stations. The main menu organizes your music by title, artist, genre, etc, but unfortunately you don't get to create your own playlists (I would have liked to be able to create a different playlist for "workouts", "errands", etc). It took me half a day to figure out how to load a DVD movie onto this thing. I finally was able to using Wondershare DVD Ripper, but don't expect to really enjoy any movies. How can you on such a small screen? But alas my son likes having a movie or two on there. At this price (I did not buy mine here) you can't complain.

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For the past yr I've been using the RCA Pearl was ready for a video MP3 Player upgrade,so I remained with RCA and bought the Opal. It's very slim and fits in my pocket as I walk..love the fact if you turn it off it resumes to were you left off with a cd song. The 2" screen is great for viewing videos or pictures.

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We had it a week and it didn't work for 2 days of it....was so slow to load, would freeze up and after 4 days the screen was clearly messed up. My daughter was really disappointed as it was a Christmas gift. We took this back and got the Philips Gogear Vibe....MUCH nice and less $$.

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Features: There is not an option for playlists. I customize my workouts by beats per minute so whenever I want to change a song, I have to go through and delete ALL of the songs up to the point where I add the new song and then re-add the other songs. Also, there is no way to skip a song until the album artwork goes away. Therefore, I have deleted most of the songs that have album artwork because I just don't feel like waiting. Thirdly, I am unsure how they categorize the songs because there are some songs that were arbitrarily relegated to the "Unknown Artist/Unknown Title" category which means that this takes extra time to find them when I want to listen to them instead of just being able to scroll through the "Title" or "Artist" lists. Fourth, unlike the Go Gear I used to have, you cannot listen to your songs while the device is charging.

Battery Life: Pretty good. I can go a few days before absolutely needing to charge.

Portability: Fine.

Sound Quality: There has been more than one occasion on which there was lots of static for no discernible reason at all.

Overall, considering the strides that technology has made, I feel this device is a little prehistoric and am looking forward to getting another device that is NOT made by RCA. I will probably give this one to my 9 year-old cousin. The only reason I gave this 2 stars is because it IS an MP3 player as is marketed.

"Features"

If any of your music has artwork impeded in the ID3 tags enjoy waiting. You are unable to skip to the next song while the opal is loading music artwork. It does this at the speed of displaying an image over a 14.4 kb modem from 1990.

The opal does not recover from crashing...at all. Have you ever had an mp3 player or usb flash drive connected to your computer and forgot to unmount the drive before disconnecting from the computer? I have. The drive 98% of the time will be fine.

Not the opal. If you forget to unmount it from the computer, 100% of the time it will power up, initialize, then go to a screen that says "building database this may take a while" at which point it will sit there forever or shut down. You have just f**ed up your Opal and now must reinstall the firmware. This happens not only from forgetting to unmount it but from shutting your computer down while the device is still connected. (even though that automatically unmounts EVERY OTHER USB harddrive/MP3 Player) And it will also happen if the device freezes/crashes while listening to music. (Which happened to me last night, it froze in the middle of a song, I held the power button to force restart the device and BAM! I am now reloading the firmware and copying back all of my music...again.)

This is the worst MP3 player I have ever owned. DO NOT BUY!

Sony CFD-S07 AM/FM Radio Cassette Player CD-R/RW With MP3 Playback Bass Reflex Speaker System

My husband and I owned two of the predecessors of this boom box and burned them out through intensive use. But they were so terrific that we bought one of these offspring for our dinnertime classic jazz concerts. After fumbling around for a short time figuring out where the right buttons were on the player and the remote (the layout differs from that on the previous machine), we got going and were so impressed with the sound quality and the compact size of the player (it's about half the size of its parent) that I bought another one for my office. Can't comment on the MP3 playback as we do not have any material in that format.

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WD My Book AV DVR Expander 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive

Connection is about a 5-minute job, but initial boot-up takes awhile. Western Digital instructions are incomplete and fairly useless--just diagrams.

Unplug the Tivo power cord. Connect the SATA cable between WD Expander and Tivo. Power on Expander (check for white light in front). Plug in the Tivo power cord. Go to Settings menu on Tivo, then External Storage, then Add. Then, BE PATIENT! It took my unit about 25 minutes to boot and reconfigure everything. A couple of times I thought something might be wrong but I continued to wait and it finally completed and worked. You can also find instruction on Tivo's Web site. These are basically the same as given here.

The Expander box only shows compatibility with Tivo Series 3 and Premiere. But, that is wrong. I suspect that reviewers who say it does not work with a Tivo HD unit had a defective unit or cable, powered off and on in the wrong sequence, or were impatient and bailed out while the Tivo was still reconfiguring during the initial boot-up.

I bought from a local Best Buy store. Their price is too high ($150). But, I wanted the convenience of easy return in case the reviews saying the Expander would not work with a Tivo HD were correct.

I hope this helps anyone with a Tivo HD that is considering the WD My Book AV DVR Expander.

August 25, 2011 Update:

Several months ago our Tivo started randomly rebooting. This got progressively worse. We started having recordings interrupted or skipped entirely. Over several months dealing with Tivo tech support we finally eliminated all possibilities except the DVR Expander. Once I uninstalled it we had no more random reboots. The unit has a two-year warranty so we had plenty of time left on it. I returned it to Western Digital for a replacement which we have now received. Their return process is very customer friendly. I did have to pay about $17 for shipping return, however.

During one of my many conversations with Tivo Tech Support one person advised that these frequently go bad. They said you are better off buying a Tivo with a bigger hard drive to begin with. But, when we bought our Tivo a larger internal drive was not offered. Since this was a techie, I doubt he was trying to up-sell me. From his standpoint, obviously troubleshooting is easier if you have fewer peripherals attached to the system.

December 20, 2011 Update:

I received the warranty repaired or replacement unit several months ago. I delayed reinstalling it because of having recordings on the Tivo I did not want to lose in the reinstallation process. When I finally did reinstall the MyBook, I only had three recordings stored on the Tivo and did not care if I lost them. To my surprise, I did not lose anything with the reinstall.

The new unit has been up and running for a week now. Everything is good. I have another year left on the warranty. Hopefully, I will have better luck with this one.

I received my 1TB WD My Book AV Expander today. Here's how it went down:

Unpack, plug into back of DVR with included eSATA cable, plug WD HDD into wall outlet, turn on DVR and TV. See prompt on TV about new attached storage. Look for and find remote that kids misplaced. Then Press A on remote to format. Wait 30 seconds. Now when I press List it shows 5% Full (used to be 40%). It didn't even interrupt the current recording. No more taping over my World Cup matches. How easy is that?

So far no heat from new hard drive and it's whisper quiet. Drive also comes with a USB cable (not needed for this project as the Scientifc Atlanta 8300HD supports eSATA only for adding storage.) From WD's website this drive is on the list of supported drives for Time Warner SA8300HD but it was still a relief to see it immediately recognized.

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I received the item and unpacked the HD. Plugged the power supply into the surge protector and the other end into the drive. Plugged in the eSATA cable into the FIOS DVR and the HD. Turned on the FIOS box and tried to get it to recognize that the drive was plugged. I noticed no lights on the front of the WD HD. I then rechecked the eSATA cable it was goodthen I had that sinking feeling (oh no bad HD). I then rechecked everything again and discovered an ID10T error (Idiot error from my time working on a help desk). I had not plugged in the power adapter all the way into the HD. Fixed it and followed the onscreen directions to format the drive. It is working great.

So what you see in the directions is what you get. HD, USB cable, USB converted, eSATA cable, felt pads and power supply. This HD can be mounted either vertically or horizontal. The unit comes with stick on felt pads for horizontal mount. You need to remove the felt feet from the backing and stick to the HD.

From Verizon FIOS at the time of this review:

Which Verizon FiOS TV DVRs are compatible with eSATA devices?

The following FiOS TV DVRs are compatible with eSATA devices:

* Motorola QIP 7216

* Motorola QIP 7232

* Cisco CHS 435 HDC

Does the eSATA device I use require a minimum or maximum storage limit for FiOS TV?

There are no minimum or maximum storage limits for FiOS TV. However, Verizon recommends the following model types:

* Western Digital WDBACS5000EBK-NEVZ 500GB

* Western Digital WDBACS0010HBK-NEVZ 1TB

* Western Digital WDBABT0010HBK-NESN 1TB

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We have had a TiVo Premiere XL for about 2 months and got this pretty quickly as an accessory along with the wireless-n adapter. This 1TB HD works great and combined with the 1TB internal drive on the Premiere XL I now get 301 HD hrs/up to 2637 SD hrs (I have the SD recording quality set on highest so I actually get 447 sd hrs capacity). Installation was easy as I was used to hooking one of these external HDs up to the cable DVRs (we still haven't gotten rid of them all yet-still waiting for the "tuning adapter" just for this TiVo). The directions are on the TiVo website, but you basically unplug the TiVo, plug the HD eSATA into the TiVo, then plug in the HD and wait for it to spin up (about 20 secs), then plug the TiVo back in and the on-screen menus will take care of the rest after booting back up. No problems whatsoever with the exception of one time watching a show where there was a hiccup in the recording-not sure whether the recording was on the TiVo HD or the external HD-and rewinding to get it to play again sent the TiVo to do a reset. Only has happened once in 2 months. Very quiet, virtually no HD noise (you can hear spinning if you stick your ear up to it). Looks pretty nice with the single pin dot although you can just as easily hide it behind components if you want.

I was a little hesitant because I have had mixed success with WD externals. One, a 2GB My Book Studio II works great as my main backup with firewire on a Windows 7 x64 PC. Another, an older WD My Book 500gb had lots of issues with the controller card inside and eventually it failed-but I cracked it open (literally because this version at least was not user serviceable) and was able to remove the 500gb HD and put it into an Antec external enclosure and now it works great as a media (audio/video files) drive.

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Three things

1. Your DVR set top box needs to be one of the following models

Motorola QIP 7216

Motorola QIP 7232

Cisco CHS 435 HDC

Only these Fios Models have a eSATA port to plug your device into.

2. Check your System Information. You find it pressing Menu and then Settings then System Information

You need Release 1.9 or higher. As of May 8, 2011 this release is just being rolled out. Even if you have one of

the above boxes the box will not recognize the external drive until you are upgraded to Release 1.9. The upgrade will happen automatically when Fios releases the upgrade in your area.

3. Not sure if this is just with Fios or for everyone. This device will only work with one DVR. If you want to use it in a different room or loan it to a friend, when attached to the second DVR you will get a message that the drive needs to be reformatted. This will erase any shows you have on the drive.

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IMAGE® 2.4GHz Wireless Audio Video Transmitter and Receiver for DVD, DVR, CCD camera, IPTV, Satell

I used this transmit music from one room to another. It was easy to set up and has worked great. Don't know about long distances but from one room to the next it works just fine.

Purchased this product to keep from running an antennae wire down the wall. It wouldn't work for me. Returned it for

A Terk leap frog and it worked. May have been something I was doing incorrectly but I followed the instruction as best I could

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Using this as a wireless transmitter/receiver for my surround speakers in my bedroom. Great where you can't run wiring or don't want to see the wires.

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Took 5 minutes to hook up and they worked perfectly the first time. Sure beats running wires to speakers not close to your computer.

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I saw something similar advertised on one of the shopping channels. It was over $150.00... this equipment aliveates the need for your cable company installing a separate line and box for little cost.

Uitstor USA Inc M50-US Mobile Media Player

• Play-back All Audio, Video, Photo Files Format On Your HDTV or Standard TV.
• Use Your HDTV As Large Digital Photo Frame.
• Digital Signage Player For Your Business or Home.

My husband bought this as he knows about these things more than me, this is HIS review : I was looking for a player mainly for mp4 and mkv files, after reading the reviews i thought this must be the best option available, so i bought it. Connected it to my 1080p TV and the picture quality was terrible, very jumpy, distorted at times, and very dark image, even when adjusting the settings it was too dark etc. Tried it on my 720p TV and much better, very good picture quality, much brighter image ( tried on both TV;s setting up 720p and 1080p but no noticable diference.

Played mp4 and older mkv fierls great, but wont play the latest MKV files at all. I can play them on my PC after installing latest MKV codecs but nothing available for the Uebo yet. Personally, i think there must be a bettr product out there somewhere.

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I bought this to use in an museum display. Getting it set up to play the video did take a little bit of fooling around with the file type, but once it was set up, things have been great. It runs 8 hours a day, seven days a week for five months now with no problems.

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I bought the Uebo M50 to play MKV fikes and it works better than I had hoped.

No problems found.

ROYAL TC100 TimeMaster Time Clock

one thing that no one has mentioned is the control knob, you have to set the date manually, i was hoping it can be done automatically, so it can't be just left there, every day you have to set in and out for your employees to print.

Absolutely love this time clock. Now have two clocks for each office location. Easy for staff to use. Changing ink is simple. Ink refills are very inexpensive. Time cards can be obtained from any office supply store and bottoms can be trimmed if needed.

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Just got this time clock in and I love it. It is easy to program and would be very difficult to cheat it. The price is much lower than others that I looked at that have the same capabilities.

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The title pretty much says it all. This might be a good time clock, but I wouldn't know because the one I ordered from Ace Photo Digital was broken. I chose to send it back for a full refund instead of dealing with the hassle of repairs.

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I installed this in my office and half the time the machine doesn't read the cards. The dial also is not great at getting the card aligned right. The manual dial is also another nuisance that had made me waste a lot of hours tracking overlapping prints. Stay away from this product, in my opinion it is worth spending an extra $40 for any other product.

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LG ANWL100W Digital Device 1080P Media Streamer[Compatible with 2010 LG TVs

I purchased the LG 60pk750 a few weeks ago and love it. I have it wall mounted in a location which is VERY difficult to run wires to. Until now, I have had it temporarily hardwired to my DVR with exposed cable until I found a better way. Enter the "LG AN-WL100W Wireless Media Kit". I was skeptical about wireless HD, but decided to give it a try after reading the small amount of online reviews. Really not much info available about this product, but did find useful info at Crutchfield and home theater magazine. I hope that this review informs people about this product better.

Functionality:

Before I mounted my TV back on the wall, I decided to test the results through the AN-WL100W (smart, huh). I was actually very surprised... the picture was really good. I watched Discovery HD for a while, flipping between hardwired and wireless and saw NO difference. At times I thought I saw picture degradation, but I would flip back to the hardwired and realized that the source was the problem (broadcast HD is hit or miss). Don't have my Bluray yet, so this is the best reference I had. Sound was never a problem, though I was just using the TVs tiny speakersI can say that it sounded just like the hardwired. For this test, the head unit was about 4 feet away, directly behind the TV, behind a wall in my garage(drywall-studs-plywood-drywall).

Later, I mounted my TV with the wireless dongle connected and in place, and put the headunit where I planned to keep it, in a AV closet approximately 10 feet from the center of the TV, to the right front of the TV. This time I could not get sufficient signal strength to get picture. I could not believe it! The total distance from the headunit to the dongle was about 12 feetline-of-sight obstacles were a regular interior wall (drywall,studs,drywall), and the TV itself (since the dongle is mounted on the back). The screen would show that it saw the headunit and was tryng to establish picture, but signal strength was too low.

Form:

The product itself is really nice lookingno question. However, I have a huge issue with the dongle size and installation. The dongle is TOO BIG. The AN-WL100W was custom designed for these LG TVs, yet they still managed to allow the dongle to be the tallest protrusion on the back of the set! WTH?!? This is a problem if you are wall-mounting (why else would you buy this product if you were using a stand on a cabinet?). Similarly, the HDMI and control cables which plug into the back of the TV are not designed with 90 angles, so they get all bent and crimped up against the wall too. With so much design going into the electronics of the AN-WL100W, it simply blows my mind that they didn't make wall-mounting a slam-dunk by making the dongle just a bit thinner and supplying cables with 90 bends!

Summary:

I was hoping that going wireless (and paying $300) would simplify my location situation. I also liked the fact that it had nice IR repeaters and integrated switching controlled by the TV. The signal quality was good at very short ranges, but was useless at about 12 feet with a reasonable obstruction. I don't know how practical this is, because I think most people shelling out $300 for this are buying it because they might have an obstruction or distance situation. I would have kept fiddling with it if it hadn't been for the wall-mounting issues mentioned earlier. This sealed the deal for me to return it.

We have a cable TV set-top box in our master bedroom, along with a home entertainment system. We also have an LG 55LE5400 HD TV against a wall in our living room, with about 35 feet of open space and one normal drywall between the two spaces. I needed a way to get the HD signal from the bedroom, through the wall, to the living room TV, and this looked like it might do the job.

The product description on the LG website includes the statement "The kit sends an uncompressed, full HD 1080p signal to your TV from up to 50 feet away, even through walls and doors." If this statement were true, my review would read differently. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be the case, and a red flag went up in my mind when I noted that the documentation provided with the device also included a "recommendation" to "place the Media Box and the TV in the same room". Since the distance between my living room TV and the Media Box was only 35 feet, I thought it might work adequately. However, mounting the dongle (receiver) on the back of the TV as suggested in the documentation led to an unusable signal strength at the TV, with frequent drop-outs.

After some experimentation, I have settled on positioning the dongle (receiver) flat on the tabletop under the living room TV screen, with the end with the LG logo pointed at the media box, which is behind the wall in the bedroom. The supplied connecting wiring is barely long enough to permit this, but it's workable, and with the dongle in this position, the signal drop-outs ceased, and picture quality is pretty good.

So, in summary, we're getting acceptably good performance from the system at a distance of 35 feet through one drywall. There are no other 5Ghz signals in this environment to cause any interference, and the distance between the Media Box and the dongle is all clear space with no furniture or other obstructions. My opinion is that the LG claim of a useful reception distance of 50 feet is exaggerated.

I rated all item "attributes" for this item midto -high except "Protection", which I did not rate at all due to lack of relevance.

Buy LG ANWL100W Digital Device 1080P Media Streamer[Compatible with 2010 LG TVs Now

This product is advertised as wireless HDMI so I was expecting that this product will not alter video quality.

Unfortunately it does compress video and shows artifacts even at very close range.

I did some further testing and saw that the video is not 1080p 60 but doing a 3 frame interpolation, so it is really doing 1080p at 20Hz, which mean it is lossy video compression, also colors are downgraded.

For a product at this price point this is not matching the quality expected from LG's product line.

Also be aware, the LG TV supports 3D but this product does not.

Anyway I can't find a good point about this item.

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I got this free with the purchase of an LG Tv. It does exactly what is says, broadcasts HD without wires. I have it hooked up in my living room to my main cable box via an HDMI splitter and the TV is in my bedroom. The signal does transmit through the wall with out much trouble and the picture is normally perfect. I had some troubles after I mounted the wireless receiver to the back of the TV. LG reccommends the placement but you may want to play around with it before settling on a spot. I moved it a couple inches and now the signal seems to be coming in fine. I did have to get another remote from my cable company for their box, the LG remote wont work with it throught the wireless media kit, the cable remote does just fine. Over all I am really happy with this unit, especially since it was free!

------------------Up Date---------------

For some reason after several months the signal does not reach my television. Nothing has changed as far as location but some how the signal has become too weak to be recognized. Not sure what has happened...

----------------Up Date-----------------

Cut a hole in the wall and ran the wires from our living room cable box to the unit into our bedroom. Did not need to buy new cables, the onles included with the unit were long enough. Must have been a streaming issue with the wall blocking the signal. With the unit now in the same room on separate walls the TV and unit are less than 15 feet apart. Everything is working perfectly now.

---------------Up Date------------

The unit died again. It cannot send an uninterrupted signal to the TV even with the unit being in the same room as the TV and with a clear line of site. I loved the concept so much when it was working I bought a new unit, it was cheaper than sending it in for repair. Once installed the new unit acted the same as my old unit. The signal pulsed on and off and would not work properly. I sent the unit back for a full refund. I'm very upset as I loved how things worked when they were working. Back to the drawing board!

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This product is great! The picture quality is fantastic! Colors are stunning and the connection is rock solid!

I am streaming wirelessly full HD 1080p 60Hz from my Blu -Ray player to my new 55 inch LG LED TV and the quality is just as good as a top-of-the-line HDMI cable. In fact, I tested it just to be sure, and I could not tell the difference between HDMI and wireless. I can have all my A/V devices hidden in my media center cabinet and wirelessly send the video to the TV across the room. The receiver unit is small and hidden behind the TV, and it gets its power from the TV. So my set up is now clean of unnecessary cables and picture quality is superb.

Great Product! highly recommended!

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Kodak Easyshare Z650 6.1 MP Digital Camera with 10xOptical Zoom

Good value when bought thru Amazon. The camera is very small, but full featured. Full auto still shots produce great photos, yet if you prefer, it allows aperture/shutter speed priority for more control. The buttons, switches and controls are placed where they are easy to find without looking and the on-screen display lets you see what you will get. I recommend this camera.

I just purchased the Kodak z650 and have taken a number of pictures. It's easy to use and learn all the functions. Before buying this camera I looked at a number of cameras. I picked this one because of cost, zoom, and mega pixels. I looked at the Kodak z740 which is being replaced by this model and for a few more dollars you can get this model which takes better quality pictures and has the histogram feature.

A read reviews and a number of people complained about having the zoom without image stabilization. Well, when I took pictures at full zoom, even using the digital zoom, the picture was shaky in the view finder but came out clear. The 10x zoom is very nice even without image stabilization.

The price of this camera for the features is incredible. That is why I picked this camera over others. Read the reviews. This camera gets good reviews, even from the professionals. For the price you won't go wrong.

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I am very pleased with this camera. I bought it in hopes of replacing the Canon Sure shot that I had that took blurry pictures. This camera is the nicest digital camera I have seen. It is below a SLR digital, when in reality, it takes about the same kinds of photos as an SLR digital. If you are a professional photographer, you could do wonders with this camera and get awesome results. The LCD screen will show up fuzzy when viewing the image..BUT, once you take the photo, it comes out crystal clear. I am very much pleased with the performance of this camera. When I figure out how to work the image sharing on Amazon, I will show you some sample images from some of the modes the camera offers. I think anyone who buys this camera, and reads about all of the features and knows how to work it properly will love it. Like anything, you need to read instructions to see how it works, what does what, etc. From each mode I tried, this camera took a nice clear shot with amazing detail. Anyone who buys this camera will not be disapointed. It is a quality item. Also, very light weight and small. Great camera with a very affordable price.

Read Best Reviews of Kodak Easyshare Z650 6.1 MP Digital Camera with 10xOptical Zoom Here

This is my second Kodak digital camera and like my old one I just love it. Flat out it takes some of the best pictures I've seen or taken for that matter. It's rich in features. From almost full manual PASM control to automatic point and shoot to multiple 'scene' settings for differing situations. Power up to first picture is quite quick. Shutter lag is quite small (no more missing those action shots!). The 10x optical zoom does lack stabilization but in good light and with a good shooting stance you won't generate much image shake. Macro photography is, as I've experienced in the past with my CX4230, exceptional although using the flash for extreme close-up work can generate shadows on the image due to the location of the flash unit. Natural light and no flash eliminate this problem. That all being said I do have some complaints; The door covering the memory card slot feels flimsy and could easily be damaged or broken. The 'joystick' used for navigating the menus is small and hard to use for fumble fingered guys like me. It takes some getting used to and can slow you down changing modes or settings if you're in a hurry. The camera seems to have some trouble getting focus in low light (I like to shoot at the beach at sunrise) and the extremely bright and annoying green 'low light assist' lamp cannot be turned off even though the Kodak FAQ page for the Z650 says it can be. All in all though, this is a great camera! It's got some heft to it so it feels like a real camera and not a tourist toy. It comes with a (plastic) 55mm adapter which allows you to fit any number of filters to the camera, though the included lens cap will not attach to a standard 55mm filter. Speaking of the lens cap, it's the one true disappointment with this camera, it does not stay on very well at all. The slightest tap and it will fall off. This can be somewhat solved by leaving the 55mm adapter on the camera as the cap fits that much better. I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking for an ultra-zoom model for a good price. You can't go wrong here.

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Just got the camera. I used to own Canon S70, which is better in everything besides the zoom. Unfortunately, my old canon was stolen, so I had to look for a temporary replacement, until I can afford a nicer one. Well, my search stopped at this Kodak. I got it for $200 only, which is great.

Everything works great so far. I cannot comment on the life of batteries, but I bought 4 recharchable ones and a recharger, so I doubt I would ever run out of power. I also got a 512M card, as the medium picture size is around 2-2.5M each.

Zoom works fine. I would say it's great for such camera. Of course you cannot zoom fully and expect that leaves on a tree would be in perfect focus, but it takes great pics in full zoom, so if you question that capability, disregard all negative feedback on this issue.

It takes pics in nice color. I would say 'full' color. Blue is blue and green is green. I've heard that Kodaks were good in this, so i can only confirm that rumor now.

As for the rest of functions, I have not had enough time yet to experiment with everything, as the school has already started for me, so I only have so much each day to devote to my new toy.

I hope I'll have time in a week or so to post more comments on other features, but to all who are considering this camera, I would say this:

it's not too small, but fits in one hand nicely,

it's 6M pixel, so takes nice resolution pics, which are below 3M each

it has nice zoom

it takes nice color

So, for this camera with its price, I gave it 5 stars. If you are looking for superior performance or quality, look at cameras that start at $700 or $800 you would not find anything in this price range that would satisfy your need. (I am looking into buying a $800 camera myself, so I've done a lot of research trying to get a nicer bargain with a cheaper camera and found out that there is too much of a gap between any 'cheap' camera and what I really want).

Hope I could be helpful

Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Plus High Definition (1080p) Game Capture Device for Mac/PC with

To start off, I'm writing this review solely from the perspective of someone using this to record footage from video game consoles (an Xbox 360, in my case), because that's why I bought it and that's all I've used it for so far.

Upon opening the box, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a component cable included, a nice bonus. The first thing you'll notice is how light the device itself is. The all-plastic body and the lack of weight contribute to give it a slight cheap feeling, but this is not reflective of the overall quality of the device, as I'm about to explain.

The HD PVR has pass-through outputs, which means you can plug your console into the PVR and then the PVR into your TV (with the included component cable), eliminating the need to split the signal. I was a little bit worried about any input lag caused by the pass-through, but I was thankful to discover that there is absolutely none. The one downside of this, if any, is that the PVR has to be on for the pass-through outputs to work. It doesn't have to be recording and the software doesn't have to be open, so it's not that big of a deal, but it's just one more device that is sapping power.

After getting everything hooked up, you have to install the included software on whatever PC you're going to be using to record. The software installation was pain-free, although I recommend getting the latest driver updates from their website and the latest software updates through the software itself. Make sure that you do NOT lose the CD, as you can only download the driver from Hauppauge's website, not the included software. One of the downsides of the PVR is that only the included software and a small list of 3rd party software will work with the device. Luckily, this isn't that big of an issue as the included software works great, with minimal issues.

One of the great things about the HD PVR is that it does all of the H.264 encoding on the box itself. In other words, you won't need a high-end PC to record in HD because the HD PVR does all of the heavy processing. You will need a high-end PC to watch and edit HD video, however. Unless you're just archiving or using the PC as a storage device (and then accessing the recorded videos on your 360, for instance), you're going to want a high-end PC to edit and playback the video that you record. There's simply no getting around this: if you want to produce videos in HD, you're going to need the tools for it.

The preview window provides smooth, full-quality video. There is a significant amount of lag between the source and the software preview window, however. If you were hoping to sit at your PC and play by watching the preview window, you can forget it. The input lag will make it impossible.

Overall, the video and audio quality are excellent. This will produce video miles beyond any SDi capture card you have. The device will record in whatever format you input (1080i, 720p, etc.). I would recommend going with 720p over 1080i. The lack of interlacing outweighs the gain in resolution, in my opinion (unless you're taking a screenshot or taking video with little movement). It support frame rates up to 60fps, maybe beyond. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 720p at 60fps looks absolutely beautiful. The device lets you change the bitrate from 1MBps to 13.5MBps, so you can increase the quality of the video and sacrifice a small file size, if you wish. I find 8MBps to be a good balance. It allows you to fit 1 1.5 hours into around 5GB, and it still provides video that's good enough for YouTube HD uploads and similar casual usage. If you're going for production-quality video with almost no compression artifacts, you can easily increase the bit rate, but you're going to pay for it in file size and the power it requires to process.

All video is encoded in H.264. The software lets you record in 3 container formats: .TS, which is a generic 'transport stream' compatible with many digital media players; .M2TS, which is compatible with the Sony Playstation 3; and .MP4, which is compatible with the Xbox 360. These are somewhat-confusingly labeled "AVCHD", "PlayStation 3", and "Xbox 360" in the software, respectively. It's important to note that *this has nothing to do with what you're recording from* it only has bearing on what device you want to play back the recorded footage. The MP4 format will play back on an Xbox 360, while the other formats will not. I recommend choosing the format that works best with whatever software you're going to use to edit the video, or whatever device you plan on using to watch the video. Note that most software will be able to open/edit an MP4 file, while I've found less compatibility with the other formats. If you plan to burn footage to Blu-Ray disk, though, go with .TS, as it's the format used on Blu-Ray disks and so your video won't require any transcoding, which is very nice (you can burn a Blu-Ray disk in just a few minutes).

If you don't want your footage encoded in H.264, there is an included converter program that can convert to variety of formats, but I haven't tried it yet, so I can't tell you how well it works.

The only two minor issues that I've had have involved the software. Sometimes the capture program will not recognize the device, requiring you to unplug it from the computer and plug it back in, at which point it should work normally. It's not that big of an issue, and it may be specific to my computer, but it's worth noting.

Secondly, the included playback application, TotalMedia Theater, causes a hard reboot whenever I try to start it. This also isn't that big of a deal because there's lots of other software that can play back the recorded files. Based on searches in which I've found only a couple of mentions about the problem it appears to be a very rare issue, but it's still worth noting. (I'm using Vista 32-bit, for reference).

Overall, the HD PVR is great for recording footage from hi-def consoles like the 360 and PS3. It's easy to use, doesn't require an insanely powerful PC, and produces good-quality video and audio in a good format at a reasonable file-size. Although the price is a bit steep, it's worth it if you really want to record high-quality, high-definition game footage from your 360 or PS3. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in a response and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

Here's the summary:

Not a DVR. This is a pass-thru from audio/video source to PC.

Generates H.264 at Baseline Profile 1.0 only -not the High Profile 4.1 that x264.exe-based programs generate. The Baseline H.264 quality is not as good as the High Profile quality using the same bit rate.

Generates default .M2TS files which are difficult to edit -use the .TS file output instead for easier editing.

Arcsoft software is good for capturing and that's it. The software for creating a disk always seems to re-encode -a process that takes my PC days or makes my PC hang.

After capture, I have to use third-party software to finish production.

The product is not an easy out-of-the box solution. Hookup is easy, and the Arcsoft software installation is easy, capturing is easy, but it gets tricky after that.

When you capture, you can set bitrates. I set my 720x480i broadcast to 4.1 MB/s thinking it would be fine. When I made a disk and played it on the Blu Ray player, the video had a horribly compressed look. That was a straight H.264 file from the HD-PVR 1212 unit to disk without transcoding. But when I transcode some other high-quality 480i video using an x264.exe-based application with 4.1 MB/s the video quality is fine.

Now I made the mistake of capturing my first video in .M2TS. Tried to edit it. Lots of software doesn't like .M2TS. I didn't know that then, but I know now. Fortunately I was able to use the freeware TSRemux to convert the .M2TS file to a .TS file. Now apps like H264TS_Cutter and multiAVCHD are happier. Lots of crashes and failures with .M2TS.

Editing. I use H264TS_Cutter to cut out commercials. This app is handy -you take clips you want to save and create a cut without transcoding. This is important in the H.264 video world because transcoding takes days on my PCs, but the H264TS_Cutter makes a cut in minutes. You can also join two files in this manner. H264TS_Cutter has never crashed on me with .TS files. I tried using a little more complicated app for cutting -TS Packet Editor -but I had to reboot my PC after each file edit.

Creating a video disk. I use multiAVCHD. It lets me make a simple menu for the multiple titles. To get this to generate a Blu-Ray format file structure, I had to (after clicking Start) select the button [AVCHD compatible players] -the button [For all Blu-ray players] wouldn't work in my Blu-Ray player.

The size of the output files determines what size disk I can use. I use Imgburn to burn to DVD-5, DVD-9, or BD-25 -this plays in my Blu-Ray player as long as I choose the UDF physical format and UDF 2.50.

That's the quick way of taking the output from the HD-PVR 1212 and placing it on Blu-Ray compatible disk. If all this that I've described sounds like Greek, be wary of this purchase. You'll need to do your homework on using these 3rd-party apps (though fortunately the ones I've described are free) to keep the production time to a minimum and spare yourself days of needless suffering. Had these tools been included and described in the bundled software for this purchase, it would have saved me about two weeks of trial, research, and error.

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June posting

ok I would have given this 5 stars but this comes with current problem with it, this has optical in for 5.1DD recording at this time hauppuage can not get this to work so you are stuck with PCM 2.0 or audio from the analog imputs, now to the rest, it records video at 1920x1080 at same or near Blu ray discs, you have a choice of bitrate constant from 1 to 13.5 Kb or on variable all the way up to 20.2, this records in the same codeec (AVCHD) as blu ray and HD DVD discs, it will take any component imput, I have mine through my receiver where my Dishnet PVR HD, PS3, HD DVD and Oppo DVD player runs through, just for test purposes I tried all my devices and what I test recorded from dishnet, blu ray, DVD and HD DVD the test disc looked no different than the original source, once you capture your source you can then edit or add chapters then you get to add a real cheapo menu and then put in what disc you need to burn either a DVD-R or a dual layer DVD Disc, it takes about 10 minutes to author your recording to Blu ray standard and burn on your normal DVD as a true Blu ray playable Disc, beware once you burn your DVD as a blu ray playback DVD you will not be able to read it in your computer again unless you have a Blu ray Rom or Blu Ray Burner, once and if Hauppuage ever gets the 5.1 DD fixed this could be the killer to blu ray Discs, hauppuage claims by next driver release they will include the 5.1 fix. Beware this is Xp service pack 2 or Vista operating system only, also you must have a fast computer to use this device and its programs, I have a dual core 3.4 gig Intel, 2gigs of ram, 2 500 sata HDD and had to buy a nvidia 7600 512 meg video card to get this up to speed and at the fastest bitrate 13,500 I cant do anything else on the computer, but this is the problem with Hi def, its power hungry, now I can finally put my hi def movies of all 6 star wars and 3 lord of the rings on DVD for 1080i blu ray playback, you can also convert the finished files over to movie factory 6 to burn on a normal DVD for HD DVD playback also.

August update...

Ok been doing alot of capturing, have made 40 dual layer DVDs for blu ray playback and 10 dual layers for HD DVD playback. the video qua;ity is great if you keep it above 7.8 bitrate, only major drawback is no 5.1DD audio, I am now Beta tesing the 5.1DD audio driver right now, wow this makes a huge difference with the sound. Problems still, wont work with the arch software yet, sync problems, but works with TSmuxer. There seems to be heat related issues with some boxes, mine stays on 7, 10, 15 hours at a time never gets overly warm and never locks up. I have done well over 100 captures with this device. Having an Lg blu ray burner and blanks getting below $8 each, this might be the future for capturing and buring HD content at the PVR's full 13.2 to 20.0 bitrate in the future. If hauppauge can just tweak this 5.1DD driver a bit more I think this will be a great little device.

October update,

I am now a beta tester for hauppauge and I finally got 5.1DD drivers and TME software that works, so now I got a card that finally works capturing movies the way I wanted it to, 5.1DD and can also edit with the software and no more sync issues, burn to dual layers DVD's or $4 blu ray discs.

December Update

Ok Hauppauge support finally has Drivers and software out for general public that makes this device work properly. you can capture 1080i from any component ouput using the 5.1DD and you get a great captured TS or M2TS file ready to burn to a blu ray or dual layer DVD with or without menu. since october I have captured and burned over 50 movies onto disc in 5.1DD and they look great, the ones from the 1080p sources look really great. Now I manually record all my movies, so I do not know how this works with a timer or sageTV.

Feb Posting

some here wanted me to post to let you know of known problems with this and dishnet, I find there is no exact problems per say with the PVR1212 and Dishnet, you should know that sometimes when you use this device with the dishnet you get out of sync problems and digital tears in the picture, most, if no all is the blame of dishnet or most likey the channel the show is broadcast from. Example: I have tried 7-8 times to capture and record Spaceballs from MGM HD channel every time its out of sync and every time its being played out of sync on MGM HD over dishnet before I even capture it. Please keep in mind when using this device, HD content is never perfect and they "big hollywood" does not want you to capture and record their programs. So dont be surprised if "they" are always trying anything to foil you capturing a Hi Def Digital program, be it dish, cable, PS3 or HD-DVD. so far I have captured and burned onto dual layer DVD's 130 movies from all such sources all coming out perfect, be it analog, 2DD or 5.1DD audio. yeah where else can you watch on a disc, star wars, lord of the rings, batman, star trek movies in hi def, way to go hauppauge. :)

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(2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)As long as you know exactly what you are getting with the Hauppauge HD PVR, you won't be disappointed with the performance of this little black box. It is designed for PC Windows users only, although Mac owners can use it with some add-ons.

First, you'll need to understand and accept what this PVR does not do: without any memory or hard drive inside, it does not store video itself, making the PVR label somewhat misleading, and it does not burn video to DVD. To use it, you must hook it up to a PC or Mac (more on the Mac later) for both recording and playback. And it relies entirely on software running on your computer to record, edit, program, and burn Blu-ray format DVDs. The box itself has no controls other than a power button. It has component, composite, and S-video connections (no HDMI) for video, and optical and stereo audio inputs.

So what does it do? It takes the HD signals streaming into it and compresses them in a format that preserves the HD quality in a savable AVCHD file; you can record/save manually or on a schedule. These signals can come from a set top box, camcorder or other video source that can connect with the above inputs. The included ArcSoft Media software for Windows allows you to record on either the computer hard drive or an external one. Once the files are saved, you may use your computer's DVD-R drive to burn a Blu-Ray-compatible DVD or HD-DVD, edit, play back on your computer or television, convert to iPod-, Xbox-, or PS3-friendly format (MOV, MP4, M2TS, or WMV), or share playback within the same wireless network. The included IR blaster can change the channels on your set top box to the one you've programmed to record. Note: the blaster works with the included software and therefore only on Windows.

Chances are, you're going to have to do some thinking before you decide how to set up the PVR. The conversion box is 7.5" w by 6.5" d by 2/5 " h, so it doesn't take up much space itself. However, you will need a computer next to the HD source. For those who don't have their computer in the same room as the set top box, this may mean buying a computer specifically for video, and naturally, that increases the price of the set-up. However, if you don't plan on recording every day, you can hook up/unhook a laptop very easily just pull out the USB cable and your connection, if any, to the television. Hauppauge includes the basic component cables (HD source to PVR) and USB cable (PVR to your computer), but, if you want to play the video back on your TV, you will need to buy the necessary cables/connections for that. As of June 2009, the bundled PC software includes a program that allows your PC DVD drive to play the PVR Blu-Ray-format recordings. Depending on your set-up, you may want to add a USB hub, an external hard drive, and/or Apple TV.

Unfortunately for Mac users, Hauppauge does not support OS X, which means you'll have an additional software expense. Two software packages currently work with the Mac and the Hauppauge. The cheaper and less elegant solution is a program called HDPVR Capture, developed and sold privately by a Hauppauge engineer. The fuller featured, more versatile option is Elgato's EyeTV , but unfortunately, you can't use several of the features because it doesn't communicate with the IR Blaster to change channels. Both programs are available only online, although EyeTV 3 comes bundled with Elgato hardware products. If you can find a workaround for the blaster issue, the EyeTV 3 will be nothing short of awesome. It converts the PVR files to a wide variety of formats used by iLife programs. Hauppauge really needs to work more closely with Elgato to satisfy the rapidly growing Mac population. If you are a serious videophile and Mac user, you'll probably also want a product like Roxio Toast 10 Titanium Pro.

The minimum systems requirements for the PVR are: Intel Core Duo processor, 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended), graphics card with at least 256 MB memory, and a sound card. Windows users need either the XP Service Pack or Vista 32. I'm using a three year old Intel Core Duo MacBook without any difficulty. I bypass the MacBook's hard drive to save all my recordings on a portable external hard drive, the Iomega eGo 320 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400 Portable External Hard Drive 34403 (Ruby Red).

Consumers expecting a DVR with onboard memory and playback may be frustrated with the Hauppauge since it requires a computer, but for those who want to capture HD content and do something with it, you've found your equipment.

With special thanks to fellow reviewer Frank Miller.

-Debbie Lee Wesselmann

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Look & Feel:

The device looks pretty slick and has a slim profile to it. It is very light and does not take up much room at all. This is a major improvement over the previous version of the Hauppauge.

Setup:

Comes with easy to follow directions and all the cables you need which is aweosme that I didnt have to buy the HDMI cables separately. Everything went smoothly for me, I followed the directions, hooked up the cables in the order directed, and put in the installation CD to install the driver and software. Everything went great, there was only one hiccup where I was directed to the company website to install a newer version of the driver. Nothing failed, I recieved no error messages.

FYI here is my setup:

PC Sager customized laptop

i7 3610M CPU

Intel 520 SSD, 120GB

Nvidia 680M GPU

16GB RAM

Windows 7 Home Premium

XBox 360

I even have the HDPVR routed through a 4x4 HDMI matrix (allows me to hook up multiple input/output devices to the matrix and easily switch among them with a remote rather than switching cables around)....and it still works great!

I experience zero lag while playing video games through the HD PVR 2.

Features/Customization:

There are lots and lots of configurations you can change to fit your needs. I am still exploring the menus but so far I see everything I need to capture HD video. I have done a few test videos and it looks great so it doesn't even seem like I will have to change much. This may be overwhelming to some folks, but if you just call tech support and let them know what you are trying to do, they will tell you exactly what configurations to choose!

Reaction to other ratings:

Hauppague is a great company with great products. There is pretty much a 50/50 split right now for 5 star and 1 star ratings. This seemed a little fishy to me when I ordered the product, I was worried there were goign to be issues. After my experience it is clear to me that the people giving it one star either A) dont know what they are doing and can't follow directions B) get frustrated very easily and run to their computers to write a negative review before trying to call tech support (who are very helpful by the way, CALL THEM! it is amazing how many people are reporting issues here but do not mention calling tech support...craziness...) C) have a unique computer setup or personal computer issue (which can be determined and fixed if you CALL TECH SUPPORT)

Conclusion:

Great price, great functionality, great support, excellent device

If you are having any kind of difficulty, just call tech support, they are great. They have people dedicating their time to go through reviews of the product and address issues through comments...if they are that helpful in a comment section without being contacted directly, imagine if you just call them yourselves!