Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Who needs an HD camcorder when you can fake it for cheap?

Senior Editor Lori Grunin at CNET says in her post titled Samsung invokes HD to sell SD camcorders:
Who needs an HD camcorder when you can fake it for cheap? That seems to be the rationale behind Samsung's latest standard-def offerings, the SMX-K40 and SMX-K45, a pair of budget models which include an HDMI connector and some mysterious "advanced upscaling" technology to play it on an HDTV in "near full-HD quality."

If I sound dubious, it could be because based on the specs--it's not clear, but it sounds like they use a submegapixel CCD--I have doubts they will be able to produce decent standard-def video, much less attractively turn 720x480 into 1,280x720 (or heaven forbid 1,920x1,080) HD output. But never fear, because you also get the essential stalker zoom lens for that warm and fuzzy outspeccing-the-Joneses-for-a-low-low-price feeling. In this case that means 52x magicaliciously Intelli-Zoomed to 65x. At least they have optical image stabilization.
Buy a Samsung SMX-K40 Up-scaling HDMI Camcorder w/52x Optical Zoom (Blue)

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