Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DCR-TRV30 DV Camcorder

Absolutely fantastic DV camcorder. Very intuitive and easy to navigate, with a lot of scope for manual control as well as fully automated. Although excellent, so far no reviews have mentioned the less positive points, so the following are for those looking for a balance! ;-)

- quality of recording on 'memory stick' is lower than DV tape (obvious to some, but not all)
- only 4MB 'memory stick' -- if you want to buy one with 128MB it'll cost you another GBP110 or thereabouts
- battery time is measured on continuous use. Normal use (i.e. using LCD screen to view, starting/stopping, using zoom, etc.) reduces battery time massively. Supplied battery wil last 1 hour with normal use. The s-called 8-hour battery will only last 3 hours at most with normal use... Also, it's so large that you have to fully extend the viewfinder in order to fit the battery onto the camera...

530 lines of Horizontal resolution is just awesome. 3.5 in LCD is really big. Still image quality is too good for 6x4-photo size. Photo quality matches that of mid range digital camera. 1.5 megapixel on single CCD only SONY can do it. Movable viewfinder is much better than the fixed one that comes with PC110/120. Weight just 100 grams more than PC120. A firm hands grip and additional belt so that you can keep camcorder hanging around shoulder or neck. This is not available with PC110/120 so when you are not shooting you have to either hold camcorder in your hand or keep it in bag. Carl Zesis lenses one of the best in the Market. DV in/out, Analogue in/out, Laserlink out. Proper buttons for various menu operations behind the LCD and not the feather touch like PC110/120 that sometimes annoys when you end up pressing some other key. What else you would expect from this Masterpiece. Go for it, without thinking twice.

In my opinion the best price/performance/features DV package you can buy. The still picture quality suprised me, as good as many dedicated digi-still cams. Ideal for DV editing on your Mac. Highly recomended.

1.5 megapixels...its the best u can get now...definitely a must have for family man...!!! u can watch the video recorded on tv or computer...via usb connection!! 8 hours of standby time..... more than enough for u to shoot a titanic movie..!!gotta have it..!!!although the price is quite high... its worth it..!!

Finally, a digital camcorder that allows for the most sophisticated performance at affordable prices. By far, Sony's best DV. The quality of stills is second to none. The perfect solution for amateur use.