JVC GRDVL120U MiniDV Digital CyberCam Video Camera with 2.5" LCD & B/W Viewfinder

Its funny hearing all these reviews on this camera. The problem listed in earlier reviews about the camera having focusing problems. I too have had similar problems. It almost seems like the video feed stalls slightly when panning out, or tilting the camera to one side or downward. I received my first camera and right out of the box it was so bad it did not function. My replacement I have had for about 3 months, and now similar problems are arising. After contacting JVC they said they had no idea about any kind of problem and said I would need to pay to ship the camera and get it evaluated. I asked to speak to the representatives supervisor and was promptly hung up on. Now I am the last person to cause any kind of fuss in a company and rarely do anything like this at all. But this has left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I will never again deal with JVC as a company.

Overall this camcorder is very good.

Pros-
1. Video Quality
2. Ease of use
3. Price

Cons-
1. No USB capability
2. Video takes up much memory on computer.
3. Quality in low light.
4. Battery Life.

If you plan on buying this camcorder, make sure you get a firewire card. Next, If you plan to to do a lot of shooting indoors or near a power supply the battery is fine. If you will be in the great outdoors, make sure you buy an extra or better batter. The battery that comes with the camera, lasts only for about an hour.

If you plan on doing editing, make sure you have a good program on your computer. The software that comes with the camera is very bad. Also, if you want to take digital pictures with your camcorder, you dont want this one.

Although there are many cons with this camcorder there are also many pros. I use windows movie maker 2 which I donwloaded for free from microsoft.com. It films great movies, but they take up a lot of memory. Also, the optical zoom is great. It is 16x, which is awesome. Overall I would recomend this camcorder to any amatuer filmaker or person who just want to record and edit home movies. If you are a very serious filmaker, you should buy a more expensive camcorder.

I got this camera about 6 months ago for my birthday and it seemed pretty cool at first. After a few weeks though it said that, "Head cleaning," was requiered of it, so I bought a cleaning tape and used it whenever it said to, but the problem was that after 5 minutes of using it said to use it again. This is still happening with it, and unfortunatley makes the video appear choppy and with res. lines through it. Also I use it to film skate videos, and it isnt the best camera for that becuase it cannot support a normal fisheye lense that is a 37mm. Also it does not have the best video quality, and often eats the tape if its not charged all the way. Although it is certinatly a low end of the line camcordere, I expected more from it. I would go with something smaller, and perhaps (more expensive) for a good camcorder.

I just returned this camcorder this afternoon to Circuit City.

The picture quality indoors was a major, major disappointment! Under normal lighting conditions the picture was grainy at best. I used this camcorder for one week and in three different households all with the same dull, griany results. My old 8mm camcorder has a much crisper, brighter and cleaner picture! In additon to poor picture quality, the camcorder had focusing problems when panning the room at a normal pace. I slowed my panning down and the focusing problems were still evident. It would take a half a second for the image to come into focus. At first I though it may be just the picture on the 2.5" LCD screen, but when I played the tape back on my big screen, the focus problems were caught on the tape. The sound quality wasn't impressive either. I'd give it a 3 at best.

It almost makes me wonder if this particlar camcorder was defective? Who knows, I did not get a replacement and plan to do much more research on mini-dv's before I purchase another brand.

I would highly recommend playing around with this camera in a shop before ordering online. ...but when I received it, I found a lot of defects that finally made me return the camera for a refund.
It started with the weird design of the On/Off buttons. It was so tight that I broke my nail trying to turn it around. I tried some recording with zooms, and the time taken for the camera to focus sharp on a zoomed object was slow enough to blur the zoomed object. The camera is light, but the shape is weird with a pointing lens. When I switched to playback mode to review my recording, it took me 3 minutes for the 2 minute recording to rewind to the beginning of the tape...