Interesting camcorder. VHS quality, I would say no. The noisy image sensor seems to be the biggest bottleneck. They did execute it half-decently for the technological and budget limitations they had, but for $500 you would be way better off getting a digital videotape or MiniDVD unit.
The product that does it the first usually doesn't do it the best. :-) Sanyo introduced their Xacti series of SD card camcorders just a few months later in October 2003, which were far superior to the Pretec. As far as I can tell, Pretec never made any other camcorders after the DV-4200i. p.s. The JVC power supply I was using was from your MiniDV camcorder.
vwestlife I have a Xacti VPC-HD2000, and while it's not the greatest, it was the first unit to record in AVCHD 1080p at 60 FPS. Someday, I might make a video about it. BTW, the seller on ebay still has two Pretecs left if anyone is interested. I might get one just for the mic. My Xacti has a 2.5 inch mic input and the quality of the sound was good from the Pretec mic.
In Europe this kind of flash camcorders were very popular. There is a german brand - Aiptek that produced many of them. They were cheap alternative to DV camcorders which were expensive and hard to use, mostly because of the FireWire interface. The AV-in is a cool feature because it allowed people to easily digitize theirs old VHS recordings, of course if they knew that this can be done this way and had a big SD card.
Paweł Iwaniuk Actually, Aiptek is based in Taiwan. My first camcorder (back in 2008) was an Aiptek A-HD+ and it also had A/V input recording, but it was very fussy about the quality of the video signal you were recording, since it didn't have a time base corrector (TBC).
I had a DV-4500 DV camera from i'm gonna say 2004 that shot mpeg 4 video onto SD cards. The video was 352x288 at 30fps and was in the .asf format playable in windows media player. I still have that camera and it still works bit the battery door broke so I have an elastic band to hold it closed. I could use a camera that recorded full quality video from the A/V inputs. I have my new PC but i'd like something portable that does the same thing.
Back in the early 2k's most all digital cameras & camcorders had crappy sensors. The few that actually worked, didn't last. A prime example of this was the Canon PowerShot S1 IS. The sensors in these were actually quite good for a 3.2 megapixel job, but none of them lasted...
It's not bad for 2003, but I'd say 12 bucks really is about all it's worth. Not saying it's a cool little piece of the past, but I'd be a bit disappointed if I spent 500 bucks. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the review. I always enjoy your review!
I recently updated it (redownloaded it) and what i downloaded was newer and now saves by default as an MP4, also seems to support more file formats (for anyone that may not have updated it in a while, it doesn't seem to auto-update for some reason). Also on Windows 7.
That camera really is a joke, they should have stayed with DV or Hi-8 until solid state digital recording got a lot better. This thing makes actual VHS quality look like HD!. I had a look at the 1994 Sharp Slimcam VHS camcorder on your other channel to compare it, and the quality from that camera looked miles better than this one
Hi All; I saw about the Red Led and Green Led, but I didn't see anything about time, So Thank You.. Also, Thank You for letting me know about the correct Memory card, It would be interesting to see what kind of time it can Record with 2 GB, instead of the 256 MB it came with.. THANK YOU Marty
Pretec (or Pre-Tech), wonderful chosen name. They suggest they where the first just by the chosen brandname for their products. Or stands pre for previous? ;-)
Ah, the video quality isn't too bad for what it is. I like the idea of being able to record from a video source onto the camera, and it's too bad more cameras don't do that! I'd like to dub some things from videotape, but so far I can't find equipment that will actually work on my computer. Have you tried out Mr. Photo? It might actually be a decent photo editing software. I used to have something called Photo Explosion that came with an old scanner, and it turned out to be very useful (it doesn't work anymore though, now that I so-called "upgraded" to Windows 8.1"). The Windows 8 version of WMM and WMP could probably play and edit the file; they accept a lot more formats now (even though the awful new WMM layout makes editing videos a horrible chore).
Not bad for a $12 camera, I have seen some modern cams that sux even worse!! Interesting that it states its a *mass media* device, which then should be accessible on most modern computers with out the need of any special driver....
Hi All; I got mine and I am wondering about How long does it take for the Battery to charge up the first time ?? And Can I plug into it a Larger (Memory holding capacity)and Newer Memory Card ?? THANK YOU Marty
Marty Geist I believe the manual says it takes 3 to 4 hours for the battery to charge. The light on the charger will turn green when the battery is fully charged. You can use a larger card (up to 2 GB) as long as it is a regular SD card, not SDHC or SDXC.
For someone who doesn't have a lot of money, it wouldn't be too bad to grab one today, just for home videos. My DVD player has a USB plug, so videos could be xferred to a thumbdrive for viewing on a TV that way. ;) For the cost, I expected it to be worse than it was. I wonder how large an CD card it could take? Oh, did you find out how long the battery for it could last?
***** The battery probably lasts about an hour on a full charge. It officially supports up to 512 MB SD cards, since that's the maximum capacity that existed when it was new, but it should support up to 2 GB, as long as you use a regular SD card, not an SDHC card.
I am 2 months older than this camera. But I absolutely hate selfies and have a lust for tape based camcorders, particularly those from Sony, even though I've never owned one.
***** The Pretec camcorder records in MPEG-4 Visual Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) format, which is an old low-res codec that has not been used much since the early 2000s.
The quality of the image is like an old VHS tape, just digitalized, and over-compressed. For short: it's a "big" piece of crap... But unfortunately, Sony camcorders were VERY expensive at that time.
jedw 352x240 is the NTSC Video CD standard resolution, which was considered to be "VHS quality". It's the cheap image sensor which makes this camcorder's video look rather poor. The video I recorded from the Handycam via its A/V input is considerably better.
I'm curious of your motivations to own this old tech. Curiosity? Collector? Think they will be worth something in the future? Just to make YT videos!? Either way, I enjoy your vids, but don't understand your motive for collecting this old stuff. It's not like real vintage stuff which has charm, this item above is defunct, has no real charm or likeability.
arfer I like cheap and quirky things with historical interest. Everyone takes for granted the ability to record video onto SD cards these days, so it's nice to see where it all started. Also, like most people, I can't afford to buy all the latest tech gadgets when they're new, so it's nice to go back and review the items from the past that people who had more money than sense bought back when they were the latest "hi-tech" products, especially the ones that ended up being a failure in the marketplace.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
Interesting camcorder. VHS quality, I would say no. The noisy image sensor seems to be the biggest bottleneck. They did execute it half-decently for the technological and budget limitations they had, but for $500 you would be way better off getting a digital videotape or MiniDVD unit.
The product that does it the first usually doesn't do it the best. :-) Sanyo introduced their Xacti series of SD card camcorders just a few months later in October 2003, which were far superior to the Pretec. As far as I can tell, Pretec never made any other camcorders after the DV-4200i.
p.s. The JVC power supply I was using was from your MiniDV camcorder.
vwestlife I have a Xacti VPC-HD2000, and while it's not the greatest, it was the first unit to record in AVCHD 1080p at 60 FPS. Someday, I might make a video about it. BTW, the seller on ebay still has two Pretecs left if anyone is interested. I might get one just for the mic. My Xacti has a 2.5 inch mic input and the quality of the sound was good from the Pretec mic.
My family was still using the hand me down VHS-C Palmcorder until like 2010, this would have blown my mind lol
Dang thing has an external mic. I'm actually impressed by that.
as of 2023 they still exist they focus on flash memory(usb, memory cards) and accessories
In Europe this kind of flash camcorders were very popular. There is a german brand - Aiptek that produced many of them. They were cheap alternative to DV camcorders which were expensive and hard to use, mostly because of the FireWire interface.
The AV-in is a cool feature because it allowed people to easily digitize theirs old VHS recordings, of course if they knew that this can be done this way and had a big SD card.
Paweł Iwaniuk Actually, Aiptek is based in Taiwan. My first camcorder (back in 2008) was an Aiptek A-HD+ and it also had A/V input recording, but it was very fussy about the quality of the video signal you were recording, since it didn't have a time base corrector (TBC).
vwestlife ok:) Yes, you are correct. I've mistaken Aiptek with Medion which is a german brand who sells some Aiptek products under own logo.
I had a DV-4500 DV camera from i'm gonna say 2004 that shot mpeg 4 video onto SD cards. The video was 352x288 at 30fps and was in the .asf format playable in windows media player. I still have that camera and it still works bit the battery door broke so I have an elastic band to hold it closed. I could use a camera that recorded full quality video from the A/V inputs. I have my new PC but i'd like something portable that does the same thing.
coondogtheman1234 The DV-4500 is by Aiptek.
Back in the early 2k's most all digital cameras & camcorders had crappy sensors. The few that actually worked, didn't last. A prime example of this was the Canon PowerShot S1 IS. The sensors in these were actually quite good for a 3.2 megapixel job, but none of them lasted...
Not terrible. It reminds me of my Aiptek camera I had for a few years ago. I got that as a birthday present in 2005.
Nice little collector's item. I might pick one up since my check comes in today.
It's not bad for 2003, but I'd say 12 bucks really is about all it's worth. Not saying it's a cool little piece of the past, but I'd be a bit disappointed if I spent 500 bucks. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the review. I always enjoy your review!
I use Windows Vista Movie maker to this day under Windows 7.. It is a fantastic Editing software.. By far the best part of Windows vista.
I recently updated it (redownloaded it) and what i downloaded was newer and now saves by default as an MP4, also seems to support more file formats (for anyone that may not have updated it in a while, it doesn't seem to auto-update for some reason). Also on Windows 7.
Yes, because it crash most of the time when doing critical movie tasks, great product. I know, you wrote this 5 years ago.
@@codebeat4192 I used Windows Movie Maker a lot for simple little jobs. But I've always been an iMovie man, personally.
Hey that's a nice house garden you got there! Do you make any video of your plants?
That camera really is a joke, they should have stayed with DV or Hi-8 until solid state digital recording got a lot better. This thing makes actual VHS quality look like HD!. I had a look at the 1994 Sharp Slimcam VHS camcorder on your other channel to compare it, and the quality from that camera looked miles better than this one
I suppose it is pretty much VHS quality. I'd say it's closer to a medium grade general purpose tape recorded on a 2 head VCR.
i remember an old not so expensive camera that could also record video. it was pretty decent. i had that one in 2007
The SD Card holder is (or was) pretty standard here in germany. We have like 6 of those :D
I don't understand. What is an SD card holder?
13:56 I'm watching this video on Windows Vista on my Dell Inspiron 9400. One of those laptops Vista runs well on.
Hi All;
I saw about the Red Led and Green Led, but I didn't see anything about time, So Thank You.. Also, Thank You for letting me know about the correct Memory card, It would be interesting to see what kind of time it can Record with 2 GB, instead of the 256 MB it came with..
THANK YOU Marty
Pretec (or Pre-Tech), wonderful chosen name. They suggest they where the first just by the chosen brandname for their products. Or stands pre for previous? ;-)
I could definitely hear more compression in the audio when you used the external input.
Ah, the video quality isn't too bad for what it is. I like the idea of being able to record from a video source onto the camera, and it's too bad more cameras don't do that! I'd like to dub some things from videotape, but so far I can't find equipment that will actually work on my computer.
Have you tried out Mr. Photo? It might actually be a decent photo editing software. I used to have something called Photo Explosion that came with an old scanner, and it turned out to be very useful (it doesn't work anymore though, now that I so-called "upgraded" to Windows 8.1").
The Windows 8 version of WMM and WMP could probably play and edit the file; they accept a lot more formats now (even though the awful new WMM layout makes editing videos a horrible chore).
19:38 for some reason I thought that was really funny xD "clipped it onto the flap"
What a horrid sensor! Fascinating as always, though. Thanks.
neat camera, but not so great for the money back in the day.
Not bad for a $12 camera, I have seen some modern cams that sux even worse!! Interesting that it states its a *mass media* device, which then should be accessible on most modern computers with out the need of any special driver....
Now 5 left, heh heh heh
great camcorder for my grandsons!
Thanks, Don
Pretty good for the time, but I would rather just get the Sony Micro MV camera if I wanted a camera this small.
do u have a power Macintosh 5300c power supply
Hi All;
I got mine and I am wondering about How long does it take for the Battery to charge up the first time ??
And Can I plug into it a Larger (Memory holding capacity)and Newer Memory Card ??
THANK YOU Marty
Marty Geist I believe the manual says it takes 3 to 4 hours for the battery to charge. The light on the charger will turn green when the battery is fully charged. You can use a larger card (up to 2 GB) as long as it is a regular SD card, not SDHC or SDXC.
Seeing this actually makes you wonder what if there would have been D-VHS Camcorders? Ok maybe D-VHS-C :O
D-VHS uses the same video codec as MicroMV, and D-Theater uses the same codec as HDV.
@@vwestlife hm, weird. I always thought D-VHS used the DV codec while D-Theater however used MPEG2 due to the bandwidth problems.
Both use MPEG2. D-Theater runs the tape twice as fast to get twice the bitrate, for recording HD video.
Am I the only one who notices the dell optiplex? Why is it there?
Hard to believe how bad quality some my first videos were compared to todays they have really come on.
For someone who doesn't have a lot of money, it wouldn't be too bad to grab one today, just for home videos. My DVD player has a USB plug, so videos could be xferred to a thumbdrive for viewing on a TV that way. ;) For the cost, I expected it to be worse than it was. I wonder how large an CD card it could take? Oh, did you find out how long the battery for it could last?
***** The battery probably lasts about an hour on a full charge. It officially supports up to 512 MB SD cards, since that's the maximum capacity that existed when it was new, but it should support up to 2 GB, as long as you use a regular SD card, not an SDHC card.
vwestlife
Not too shabby. And I meant SD not CD obviously. ;)
I am 2 months older than this camera. But I absolutely hate selfies and have a lust for tape based camcorders, particularly those from Sony, even though I've never owned one.
What's the music at 15:00?
Noah Covert It's from an Amiga MultiTracker (MTM) song called "Dreamy Nights" by Kenny Chou.
And these days even a 32 gig card can only record for around 2 hours and 30 min in full 1080P 50 video.
The fill up real quick now.
this verry entertaing i love youre videosss
Y nho güd zpellin or gramer?
Why did you record this in 4/3?
I don't think the pretec camcorder have a 16/9 mode ...
oldmac6 Of course it doesn't. I meant the main JVC camera he used
giammyzanna It's easier not to mix aspect ratios when making a video.
Can u take the sd card out and put it in an iMac
***** The Pretec camcorder records in MPEG-4 Visual Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) format, which is an old low-res codec that has not been used much since the early 2000s.
"superb VHS quality"....isn't that an Oxymoron?
welp… and then there's the videomaker generation today who loves adding VHS look filters onto anything.
I order one..
Hey what's the song title t about 15:00? Thanks!
1AppleMaker It's from an Amiga MultiTracker (MTM) song called "Dreamy Nights" by Kenny Chou.
did you buy it used or new
NOS.
how many minutes of video can it hold
sushi dream I mentioned that in the video.
Dude, my machine runs Vista Ultimate and it works fine...
VHS quality, that is very bad marketing
The quality of the image is like an old VHS tape, just digitalized, and over-compressed. For short: it's a "big" piece of crap...
But unfortunately, Sony camcorders were VERY expensive at that time.
"VHS quality" hmm, 320x240 mp4 vs noisy low bandwidth "480i" TOUGH CALL! ;)
jedw 352x240 is the NTSC Video CD standard resolution, which was considered to be "VHS quality". It's the cheap image sensor which makes this camcorder's video look rather poor. The video I recorded from the Handycam via its A/V input is considerably better.
I'm curious of your motivations to own this old tech. Curiosity? Collector? Think they will be worth something in the future? Just to make YT videos!?
Either way, I enjoy your vids, but don't understand your motive for collecting this old stuff. It's not like real vintage stuff which has charm, this item above is defunct, has no real charm or likeability.
arfer I like cheap and quirky things with historical interest. Everyone takes for granted the ability to record video onto SD cards these days, so it's nice to see where it all started. Also, like most people, I can't afford to buy all the latest tech gadgets when they're new, so it's nice to go back and review the items from the past that people who had more money than sense bought back when they were the latest "hi-tech" products, especially the ones that ended up being a failure in the marketplace.
if you tried to sell 500 MB SD card for $500.00 today you would get laughed at! I bet those Earbuds sound horrible!
The build quality / materials used are as I can see much worse than sony's.
Hi All;
My Mistake, I said it came with a 256MB, But it really is a 64MB, so the time would be even greater..
THANK YOU Marty
VHS third generation copy quality.
Yeesh, bad quality camera.
The sony one from 1998 had the better quality..
I hate it.
It's crazy to think that my iphone shoots better video then a regular camcorder like that..
Andrew Guido But there were no iPhones in 2003!
chinese crappy camera
pretec is from germany
No. Don't you meant crappy German camera?
Dude, my machine runs Vista Ultimate and it works fine...