Philips Demos Keychain-sized Camcorder

mateub writes "Philips gave PC Magazine an exclusive demo of the KEY019 USB camera/camcorder etc. Sez PCMag: 'You can use the 128MB of internal memory for 2.0-megapixel still shots, digital video, MP3 files, and document storage.' How long before we read the first story of some, um, inappropriate footage captured with one of these?"

I gotta get one of those

[mindless4210]

That's a pretty sweet little toy. I wonder how much one of those costs... and how effective is it? I know there's probably a thousand different uses for something like that.

Great But...

[jchawk]

This is great and all but who wants 2 megapixel anything? Camera phones, this device are create for getting quick shots, but honestly do you want to archive them? They simply don't look good, because the color is off, usually they're fuzzy etc...

I'm not knocking this device, but I have a feeling it's a sign of better devices to come. With in a year or 2 I would bet you start to see 4 and 5 megapixal devices like this... This is when they are really going to take off!

Roll your own RPV

[Trespass]

Add something like this to a radio controlled model airplane and you've got a (relatively) cheap platform for surveillance or air survey work. Could have uses in archeology as well.

Re:Why must..

[timeOday]

yeah, too bad they couldn't go for 256 megs.

On the other hand, I record TV shows on my computer, and I've set the bitrate so 1 hour fits on a CD (700 megs) and the quality is pretty good IMHO. So at the same bitrate, 128 megs would hold around 10 minutes of video. I don't know about you, but I seldom shoot more than 10 minutes of Camcorder footage for anything, because it would be too boring to watch.

Re:Also known as....

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I bet they don't have a high-pass filter on the CCD, so they'd be infrared sensitive. You could illuminate with an IR led, and no one would even see the light source.

Re:Why must..

[dj245]

Thats why some people shoot for hours and hours and then take all the interesting bits and put them into a 3 minute clip so they don't bore people to tears. Its like in American Football. In 3 hours, maybe 2 minutes of something really exciting happens.

Oh and television capping at a really high bitrate and then post-recompressing to a 2-pass codec (Xvid, mpeg2, divx, whatever you want) will give the exact file size you want and much better results compared to fixed-rate low-bandwidth encoding. Thats why these types of camcorders suck, they do fixed-rate at low bitrates and 2-passing later only gives lower file sizes of the already crappy looking video.

Re:how much video can the camera hold?

[iamhassi]

pfffft... my canon A60 [powershot.com] is smaller than that thing (A60's 101.0 x 64.0 x 31.5mm vs SiPix's 100 x 74 x 36mm) plus it takes 180 seconds (3 min) of continuous 320x240 15fps video and it takes excellent 2mp pics with a 3x optical zoom (vs no optical zoom on the SiPix), storing them on dirt cheap CF cards and 4 AA batteries allow lots of videos! Best part: the price. $65 after mail in rebate! [fatwallet.com] Or you can just buy them for $165 at any walmart [walmart.com].

$91 for that "SiPix Pocket DV Camcorder" is a waste of money.... oh did you say you bought one?

The A70 is the same size but takes 3mp and 640x480 video, although it's considerably more expensive.

At only $249 MSRP...

[josh glaser]

...it sounds great, but it is $100 more expensive than the Gateway (the current best buy for tapeless camcorders, because it's not $800 like most). It has double the memory, but lacks a card slot (and an LCD display). So for it's value, well, I'd say they're both good buys for people who want an ultra-cheap camcorder that's small (these things go for convienience and such, not for super-high quality) and just fun. I'll probably buy one of these things just so I can always have a camcorder around to take video of stuff that happens (I don't want to have my "real" camcorder with me all the time). For now, that's really what I see the market for these (and, say, camcorder phones) is - when these things have hard drives, well, then they might be more of a viable alternative to a "real" camcorder. But like them a lot now - they're tiny, cheap, and you can always have them with you to capture life - in all its spontaneity.

Re:I gotta get one of those

[Slack3r78]

It's been about a month, so they're probably all gone, but you may want to check your local Target, if you have one. Target was clearing out the 64mb/1.3 megapixel still camera for $25, I picked one up for myself at the time since I needed a USB keychain anyway, and the camera was a nice addition since it was on clearance anyway.

The pictures it takes look decent - as long as you're in plain daylight. It doesn't have a flash, so if it's darker, you can expect to delete the picture as soon as you hook it up to your computer. I wouldn't use it as a primary camera, but I do tend to carry it around to take snapshots when I'm out with friends, and it serves that role rather well.

Re:Great But...

[drinkypoo]

I disagree that 1MP is enough for web use. If you weren't going to scale the image that would be true, but any time you scale an image by anything other than doubles or halves you end up doind a bunch of weird interpolation and you lose data. A lot of it. If you're going to scale an image at all in any direction then you want as much information to start with as possible.

Re:how much video can the camera hold?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canon S500's are much smaller than the A60/A70. They seem to have similar spec's both for still and motion capture.

But, in 640x480 mode, it's only 10fps. In 320x240 mode, it supports 15fps.

The Sony DSC-T1 has the best video I have heard of.. 640x480 @ 30fps. But, I hear the still image quality sucks.

In movie mode with the Canon S400, you cannot use the Zoom. I am not sure about the others, but especially at the relatively low resolutions that's a big limit.

What I am looking for is: DVD quality, 720x480p (preferably with 16:9 widescreen capability), and
30 fps and 60 fps modes.

Re:Also known as....

[Lehk228]

I think the band referred to would probably be Far Red, sorta but not really visible but not quite IR yet, some TV remotes you can see a very slight flicker from the emitter of the remote when pushing a button,