Quality for the Technophobe

Author's Rating:

Pros: quality, good price

Cons: none

Author's Review
Except for the few moments when I had an Oprah Winfrey program on a 12-year-old who was "desperate to have a baby" running through my camcorder instead my daughter's Christmas concert showing on the TV, I found the Sharp VL-H875 viewcam a dream product. It's easy to use, with a good accompanying guidebook.

I'd never owned a camcorder, so when I bought this after seeing others use this model at ice-skating practice a few months ago, I was relying on others' opinions more than anything else. I also got a good price--$500--at Costco.

It's simple to use--literally point and shoot. To playback or pause the picture, a user just touches the screen.

I have a couple of minor gripes. The lens cap won't stay on, no matter what I do. The battery runs down quickly, so the device is frequently hooked up for recharging, though there is usually ample warning of several minutes before the battery fails. And, about Oprah. I had temporarily misplaced the directions for viewing the tape on my TV, so tried to figure it out myself. At some point, I apparently reversed connections somehow and sent the TV picture through my camcorder instead of the other way around. And, once I found the directions, they weren't much help in this case. Because my camcorder, VCR and TV are all made by different companies, none of the directions I could find for any of them, nor tech support at two of the companies I'd called (couldn't get through to the TV makers' techs) could tell me how to get all the settings lined up properly so I could view what I'd taped on the TV screen instead of on the camcorder itself. So we're still seeing our stuff on a rather small screen.

But maybe once the holiday rush is over, I'll be able to find someone who knows how to set this up.
pambo