Product Description

What's another way Sharp is improving people's lives through technology and innovation? Enter Sharp's new Internet Viewcam, the VN-EZ1U. It's the world's first digital motion picture and sound camera designed specifically for the Internet. With it, you can capture all the sights and sounds around you and easily transfer them to your PC. From there, they are yours to share with the world through Web pages, e-mail, Internet broadcasting, corporate Intranet, or playback on your PC. And all of this can be done as fast and as easily as you can say "Sharp!" The VN-EZ1U is the first digital camcorder to incorporate the MPEG-4 moving picture compression standard. This means your videos take up much less space on your PC and can be sent that much faster. Because the Internet Viewcam uses Microsoft's? Advanced Streaming Format (ASF), your recordings can be viewed and heard at virtually the same time they're being downloaded. All of this by a camera literally the size of a bar of soap. Magic? No. Just another Sharp innovation!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #167270 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sharp
• Model: VNEZ-1U
• Platforms: Windows NT 3.5, Windows, Mac OS 9 and below, Mac OS X, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, Windows NT, Mac, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows NT 5, PowerMac, Windows Me

Features

• Creates Internet-ready video
• Fits in a pocket or purse
• Records up to 1 hour on 32 MB SmartMedia card (4 MB included)
• Takes still images at 640 x 480 dpi
• 4x digital zoom

Customer Reviews

Great camera for desktop publishing!
I was suprised at the good quality this small camera will produce. It is very easy to use for beginners. Takes excellent still photos, But you will need to invest in a tripod for the best quality picture in still or video. Very easy to install on your computer, both the software and the smartmedia. A big plus is it is ready to use, you don't have to buy anything else for your computer or the camera.

Great product, but only for web video
This is a great product, and appears to be the only one in its class (filmless/tapeless camcorders). And, it's even smaller than it looks in the picture. It makes reasonable quality video recordings -- up to an hour long (with a 32MB SmartMedia card), or longer if you use the time lapse mode and an (included) AC adaptor. (You can upload the video files to the web; Sharp recommends POPcast, a free video hosting service.) It also has a still photo mode, although the resolution isn't so hot. Four alkaline AA batteries supposedly last for a full hour of recording time; my experience so far has been consistent with that claim, and I haven't bothered purchasing long-life (not nicad) rechargeables. You'll definitely want to buy a larger SmartMedia card than the 4MB that comes with the camera; SanDisk and other manufacturers make 32MB cards for about $60. I also recommend adding a USB SmartMedia reader for another $40 or so, although the included floppy disk SmartMedia adapter works on most PCs with internal floppy drives. And start watching for sales on alkaline AA batteries; you'll go through a lot of them with this great camera!

Hi-tech toy
The picture quality isn't comparable to "regular" digital cameras, but then again - this isn't a regular camera! The Internet Viewcam is extremely small and very easy to handle (point and shoot). Barely OK for taking simple still images (640 x 480) and OK for making small MPEG-4 movies (max 320 x 240) that you can distribute over the Internet. It's really simple to transfer pictures and movies to/from the camera via the included smartmedia floppy adapter, but the bundled software is crappy. The Internet Viewcam is more of a toy than anything else (because of the poor picture quality), but I would recommend anyone to buy it as it's the coolest hi-tech toy I've seen in years.