Sony Webbie ready for YouTube
Sony has a new Webbie HD cameras which is designed to capture life as it happens in high definition video (1440×1080 and 30 frames per second which is high definition MPEG 4 video and almost, but not quite, serious professional HD) and 5-megapixel still photographs.
These machines are not for the modest. They are in eggplant (which appears to be a sort of purple although it has been referred to as burgundy), orange and silver. Price will be around US$170 when it becomes available in April. This camera is targeted directly at the Flip Ultra, Flip Mino and Kodak Zi6. The great advantage it has it that it is Sony.
In a sense this camera is another sign of the war that is raging in Sony between the die hard traditionalists and the modern push led by the chairman, Sir Howard Stringer. As the chairman is Welsh and therefore a decent chap betting is he will win.
Thus Sony has gone after the Flip, Creative Vado and Kodak Zi6 with the CES launch of its own pocket camcorder called the Webbie HD. And it is priced to sell at US$170.
Available in two designs, the one that will create the excitement is the MHS-PM1 which comes with a rotating swivel lens with a 4x digital zoom which means, in the real world, it has no zoom at all. But this is not the sort of device on which you would expect a zoom.
(There is also the MHS-CM1 which looks like a traditional camcorder but smaller and has a 2.5-inch LCD screen that swivels up to 270 degrees and a 5x optical zoom. Around $200. Interesting but not revolutionary.)
The Webbie HD — not a name that will endear itself to everyone — is precisely the sort of carry-everywhere device which can easily produce superior work for YouTube. And, at the same time will allow you to take reasonably high quality still pictures.
Note that Sony offers very little memory. So you will have to buy a Sony Memory Stick card which works out at about four gigabytes for US$20. This is like selling you a house with roof an optional extra.
In a sense this Webbie HD shows us what a totally new category of cameras will be like. Yes, it had been done before but it is the sheer weight of the Sony name which gives it importance. The idea of a camcorder, which also takes stills, which fits in your top pocket and is totally affordable and, important this, is made by Sony brings respectability to a new area of digital devices.
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