Name: GAUDI GHV-DV24SD
Category: digital video/still camera
Price: About JPY12,800
Release date in Japan: Early October, 2008

Tokyo-based GREEN HOUSE introduces the GHV-DV24SD, a new videocam entry in its GAUDI (Green house AUDIovisual) line of AV products. Its sales proposition: acceptable video at a dirt-cheap price, about JPY12,800.

The earlier GAUDI GHV-DV17SDS somehow hit an even lower price, JPY9800. Pretty amazing for a video camera that on the surface looks a lot like a one-hand, vertically-oriented compact camera from a big-name maker. But that cam's generous-sized display panel swung out to reveal a tiny 1.7-inch screen on the other side (smaller than many mobile phone screens), its internal memory was only 16MB, its zoom was 4x digital, and its 30fps video capture maxed out at VGA resolution (640x480) - not too impressive.

For JPY19,800, you could move up to the horizontally-oriented GHV-DV30SDS, which brought 32MB memory, 16x digital zoom, and a nice 3-inch display, but not much else - still the same VGA video.

The new GHV-DV24SD takes the middle ground between the two earlier entries: the 4x digital zoom of the one, the 32MB internal memory of the other, and a display that splits the difference at 2.4 inches. Its raison d'etre is improved video: D1 resolution (720×480), the standard for regular DVD video. The addition of image stabilization further improves video quality.

That's still a far cry from the glorious HD video now the norm in camcorders. The 32MB of memory, shared with the camcorder OS, is next to useless for video; all of the GAUDI camcorders are made to use SD memory cards (up to 2GB) for actual shooting. Further, the cam's digital zoom isn't "real" (optical) zoom. Its focus is fixed (with a single switch for closer macro shooting). Yet not all the basic amenities are missing: there's a microphone/speaker and a voice recording mode, headphone jack, AV input/output, a flash, MP3 playback, and 5-megapixel still snapshots.

Okay, so the tech specs aren't exciting, but this one's all about price. At only JPY12,800 and 136 grams, do you want to be without a camcorder in your walkabout bag?

More info (Japanese): http://www.green-house.co.jp/products/gaudi/digitalvideocamera/dv24sds/i...