Samsung SC-HMX10 8GB Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom (SDHC compatible)

I'm another poster who purchased at Biglots for only $250. For this price, it has to be one of the best bang for buck video cams period!
720p HD video quality. Flash memory. Super small and light. What more can you ask for? Well, I wish it had a cold shoe,OIS instead of EIS.
If you buy this, it will literally take you 1minute or less to get the camera hooked up to your pc and transfer the video(video transfer takes longer depending on the length)to your pc. I did a short video of my pets outside our backyard. Watching the footage on my pc blew me away. then i edited and recorded to a standard dvd, watched it on a standard dvd player. Once again, I was blown away by the quality of the video.

Don't be fooled by all the reviewers who claim their pc couldn't play the mp4 format. Just download VLC player or mediaplayer classic(both free programs) and you'll be watching your hd videos in no time. My advise is to have a core2duo pc or better with more than 1g of memory. Otherwise you may experience issues with playback and editing.

If you paid more than $500 for this cam, well, not the best bang for buck in your case. Under $300, definitely worth it. Get rid of your old mini-dv cam and join the future of consumer video camcorders.

Like a previous poster, I bought mine also at Big Lots for $250. For that price I am extremely satisfied. No wonder this made Oprah's favorite list last year. It's very easy to use (and I've used camcorders for over a decade starting with VHS-C), lots of features and the camera quality is wonderful outdoors. Indoors it's only ok but for a flash recorder at this price, it's very very good. Certainly better than other digital recorders at this pricepoint. Built in mic pickup is great and if you have external mics, it has a mini input for that too. Zoom is only 10x which is par for the course it seems for these compact recorders.
I would like to buy a spare battery for this at some point as the current one lasts barely an hour.
For people having issues with codecs on their PCs, make sure your PC can handle high definition. It's a huge resource hog and your 3 year old PC may not be able to handle the playback. Try Media Player Classic after you've installed quicktime. It's a svelte player that will hopefully maximize your frame rate. I have no issues playing the files back on my Opteron system as well as my Core 2 PCs. Even my Mac is able to handle playback and editing with no issues. Since I can't rate 4.5 stars, I'll give it a full 5 instead. If I had the money though, I'd go with the big brother which does 1080p and has a mouth-watering 300fps mode which is great for sports instruction as well as self improvement (see golf/tennis/swimming).

This is my very first camcorder. (Okay. I know: I'm culturally deprived.)

Right of the box, it's amazingly simple to use, and for $250, my new Samsung SC-HMX10C (8GB flash drive) was simply irresistible when I bought it twenty minutes ago at Big Lots, just down the street, where the dozen allocated to that store evaporated in a matter of minutes.

After plugging in its external power supply, I quickly and easily shot a few snippets of video and a photo or few, then connected its USB cable to my old, slow (pre-Intel) Macintosh mini, whereupon a Samsung external drive icon popped onto my desktop. I dragged four videos and a handful of photos from the folders in the Samsung drive into a folder on my Macintosh. When I double-clicked a video, Apple's Quicktime sprang to life, displayed the standard H.264 (MPEG-4.AVC) video from the camcorder perfectly (without any of the On-Screen Information that another reviewer misled me to fear would show up in the recorded video).

The SC-HMX10's right-out-of-the-box simplicity is my focus here, because all that I've done is to pull it from its box, plug in its external power supply, switch it on, flip open its huge LCD screen, point it at my wary but curious cats, and press the big red button next to my thumb. When the cats stopped playing games, I simply wanted to see how quick and easy it would be to examine and edit the photos and movies on my Macintosh.

Quick and easy were the words that fit so well.
Twenty minutes out of the box, and everything's looking good so far.

Then I tried two more ways to examine or edit the camcorder's movies on my Macintosh:

1) I opened my old, original version of iMovie on my Macintosh, and dragged one of the video snippets onto its movie clip editing pallette; iMovie played it perfectly, without a hint of a hiccup, on the spot.

2) I plugged the camcorder's S-Video Out cable to the input to my Macintosh's EyeTV Tuner-Recorder, which records an MPEG-2 (DVD grade) video of the camcorder's LCD screen output, while I rummaged among the Samsung camcorder's LCD touch-screen menus and replayed on the camera the video snippets and photographs stashed in its internal flash drive. I like that the camcorder continues to display everything on its own LCD all the while it is transmitting that imagery on its video-out connection to a television or any other player/recording device.

Let me see now. I think there's a User's Guide and a CD in here somewhere . . .

I'll wander back to share some more meaningful impressions, after I've explored the full range of features (and possible problems or peculiar limitations) of this seemingly wonderful video camera.

Stay tuned.

This camera was an excellent product for the price. The HD picture, touch screen ease, on camera editing, and built-in memory are all well worth the price. Figuring options out as you go (I'm not much of an instructions reader) was straightforward. Reviewing video either on the camera or on a HDTV was easy.

Warning: If you want to use your videos on a computer, the file type the videos save as (MP4) may not be compatible with Windows type players. You'll need to purchase/download a video converter program to change the file type to something your Media Player can read, MPG for example. Once you convert the file, you can edit or view your videos, burn them to DVD's, or post them on Facebook, etc. I used the Xilisoft Video Converter file.

So, after hunting around for software that could play the video I finally found a good article posted on the net here:

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/2775.page

A poster says "Hey, some formats you can actually just change the file name to .mp2 and it'll open up on any player."

I thought he was joking, then I tried it and it actually works!

I couldn't open it up in WMP or Premier CS3 before. The only thing that would open it was Zune software. Well, VLC player would open it, but it would be VERY slow.

But as long as the right codecs are installed, renaming the file to a .mp2 extension allows me to open it in both WMP and edit it in Premiere. Although Premiere still jerks around, I probably just have to render it (which looks like it'll still take a long time btw). But, just playing back in WMP I can jump around like it is a regular video without any problems.

Hope this helps.