DVD-Camcorders: Yay or Nay

[JoyMonkey]

A friend of mine wants to buy a camcorder that will record onto DVDs here in the states. She'll want to send the recorded discs home to Ireland for her family to watch, so it's important that the discs are recorded region-free or region-2.
She's computer illiterate and wouldn't want to attempt any editing, she just wants to send some video messages home.

What do you think? Will this work?

Right now I think the Panasonic VDR-M50 looks like a smart buy, but will the discs be region-free?

Remember that although PAL discs generally won't play in US DVD players without tweaking (due to resolution differences), NTSC DVD's have no problem playing in Euro DVD players - just so long as the discs are region free. So if the discs are recorded region-free, she's all set. I've looked through the M50's manual and can't fing any reference ro regions.  

[SirPeale]

AFAIK region encoding only applies to commercial DVDs.  The home brew stuff doesn't apply.

[MadEditor]

The problems with those camcorder are the battery and the lenght/price of the discs...

If she has no access to a PC with a dvd-burner then there's no other choices...

For the region question, has stated above no problem at all, not for home made video...

[abrannan]

Personal Opinion time here.  Get a Digital Camcorder (Either DV, or Digital8), firewire card, and a DVD burner (You can get these for like, $60 now).  Total cost isn't really any more than a DVD-camcorder.  That way you can edit the video before burning it to DVD.  The tapes are re-usable, too, unlike the DVDs.  Raw footage is a pain to watch.  My wife and I boiled 4 hours of honeymoon footage down to a 1 hour video.  Throw in some music/narration, and it's a lot better to watch than haivng our families sit through 4 hours of junk.

The DVDs won't be region encoded, either way.

[ChadTower]

Quick note:  

Portable laser based devices:  NAAAAAAAAAY.  Anyone EVER had a discman last very long and stand up to reasonable wear and tear?  Now picture that as a recorder, a DVD recorder, and on something you're going to want to be 100% reliable.

[bionicbadger]

Its not the region encoding you have to worry about.  In Europe including Ireland, their TV is on the PAL system as oppesed to the NTSC system used in North America.  Unless they have a DVD player that can play/convert the discs (there are many players that do this) they won't be able to watch them.

[JoyMonkey]

Its not the region encoding you have to worry about.  In Europe including Ireland, their TV is on the PAL system as oppesed to the NTSC system used in North America.  Unless they have a DVD player that can play/convert the discs (there are many players that do this) they won't be able to watch them.

I'm not worried about this, as all good PAL TVs since 1990 have been able to handle NTSC no problem (as have most VCRs). Also, all PAL DVD players I've come across support NTSC resolutions and output perfectly in PAL.

The more I read about these DVD-Camcorders, the more I think it's a bad idea; but then again, she doesn't have a computer to edit footage with so this would be the only way she could send stuff home.
 

[ChadTower]

She could get a good hi8 or digital tape based video camera and also a standalone DVD recorder.  Decent DVD recorders are down to 2-300 now and are easier to use than VCRs.

[drunkatuw]

I was one of the suckers that bought a DVD camcorder last year.  Fiance wasn't sure how long grandma and grandpa were going to be around because of their failing health, so we got one so we could show video to our kids someday.  

If your friend just wants to record and send the discs in the mail, it's going to get expensive.  Those little discs cost around $8-$10 a piece.  I spent $40 on 3 DVD-RW discs and just use those over and over.

I have not had a problem with the laser (yet).  I've actually been really happy with the camcorder.  This years model is smaller and cheaper (atleast the sony one I got).  I can't really help you on the PAL/NTSC stuff as I've only used it on NTSC DVD players in the US.

One good thing is that my fiance who is computer illiterate is able to take videos, finalize the videos and watch them or show them to friends/family...I doubt she could do that with a DV camcorder (I'd definitely not recommend digital8 as those are pretty old technology by now).

[Edgedamage]

Kinda hard to edit out the five minutes of the camera pointed at your feet with a camera that records to DVD.

[Edgedamage]

She could get a good hi8 or digital tape based video camera and also a standalone DVD recorder.  Decent DVD recorders are down to 2-300 now and are easier to use than VCRs.

Hate to tell you but the consumer set top dvd recorders are ALL useless. They even have digital artifacts in black. I work for a company that transfers film dailies to video. The production staff request that DVD's get sent to the producers each day we have gone through every
model of consumer DVD recorder. And the result is the same the client responds "you send another low quality
DVD like that again and we will pull our contract" Here is what we use.
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/bsc/category/0,,2076_15020036,00.html

[drunkatuw]

Kinda hard to edit out the five minutes of the camera pointed at your feet with a camera that records to DVD.

If you use a DVD-RW, it couldn't be easier to delete those 5 min, it's literally about 2 button pushes and you can delete that last recording (atleast on my sony)

[Edgedamage]

True DVD-RW lets you erase. Answer this for me when writing to disk what happens if the camera gets bumped?
I just like the option of editing my videos with prosumer video tools. After editing the file it gets imported to DVD Architect and I make DVD's with menus / chapters. In fact as I type this I am incoding a AVI file to a MPEG2 video stream.

[Edgedamage]

AFAIK region encoding only applies to commercial DVDs.  The home brew stuff doesn't apply.

Don't piss around with region encoding most DVD burners when faced with diffrent regions will switch about five times and then lock to the fifth region forever.

[JoyMonkey]

Don't piss around with region encoding most DVD burners when faced with diffrent regions will switch about five times and then lock to the fifth region forever.

You mean set-top DVD recorders? I didn't think PC DVD burners could recognize the difference between burning a movie and burning a load of random files. Although, I think I've only ever burned region free DVDs on my PC.

[ChadTower]

Hate to tell you but the consumer set top dvd recorders are ALL useless. They even have digital artifacts in black. I work for a company that transfers film dailies to video. The production staff request that DVD's get sent to the producers each day we have gone through every
model of consumer DVD recorder. And the result is the same the client responds "you send another low quality
DVD like that again and we will pull our contract" Here is what we use.
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/bsc/category/0,,2076_15020036,00.html

You're right... in your context.  There is a bit of difference, though,  between manually shot footage with a $400 consumer level camera and a fully produced, commercial DVD.  For the quality of footage she is going to receive from any camera under $1000, a decent set top DVD recorder will work just fine.  It will record the source as is.  I use mine on an S-video signal from a DirecTivo and the recording is just about indistinguishable from the source.  I doubt she's going to get better source video from a consumer camera than you'd get from DirecTV satellite broadcast.  She should be just fine.