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Hardware

Surf the Net on a Digital Camcorder 120

Posted by CmdrTaco from the two-scoops-of-yummy dept.
Daniel Rutter writes "Sony's DCR-IP7 Network Handycam IP is digital. It's really small. And it's got a super-tiny one hour cassette, USB, i.LINK and Bluetooth connectivity, a Web browser, an e-mail client, and a quite long list of other features." Pricey, but interesting. The review kinda pans the device, but I still dig the idea.
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Surf the Net on a Digital Camcorder More

Surf the Net on a Digital Camcorder

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  • How come recording time on camcorders suck? I'm sick of 30 minute tapes or 1 hour tapes. There should be some way to throw in a 30 gig laptop hard drive into these camcorders and record directly to that, or something. (Is there anything like that already?)
    • DV footage is about four megabytes per second. On a thirty gigabyte hard drive, you'd be able to store roughly 2.13 hours of DV footage. That's at a resolution of 720x480 at 29.97 frames per second...and at a cost that is quite a few times that of the equivalent tape storage.

      Still want that hard drive camcorder?
      • Well, what if we put dual (or quad?) T-Bird 1.5GHz CPUs and about a gig of RAM or so into this puppy? Do compression of the video on the fly. True, your camcorder would sound like a jet engine, with all the cooling gear, but it would seriously kick ass. :)
        Of course, one could always imagine a Beow.... oh, never mind.
        • "... imagine a Beow.... " with Firewire networking... Seriously, though, if we're not talkin' real portable you could wait a year (or so, "we want more processor speed!") & buy a laptop with firewire & a f/w "dumb" camera & let the laptop do the crunching.
  • It seems like they could have made the remote smaller or the buttons larger.

    It's bad design. Other than that the camera seems really feature enhanced.

    In a few months when the price drops it might be worth checking out.
  • Wouldn't it be more useful to have a laptop and a more basic camera? Then you could use a firewire link (or bluetoth) to transfer the files without the limitations of the limited display/odd interface/etc that would plague the email client and web browser.

  • Only one question- (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mattcelt ( 454751 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @01:47PM (#2569759)
    Why?

    There doesn't seem to be much value on putting a web page on a 2" screen.

    And email? On a video camera? I think I'll pass, unless someone can come up with a really compelling reason that this truly is useful "convergence".

    • Re:Only one question- (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SteveM ( 11242 )

      And email? On a video camera?

      The site is /.'d, so I could not check the specs. Nor could I see who this camera was intended for.

      While this doesn't make sense for a consumer grade camera today, it might make sense for a pro grade camera for use by reporters in the field.

      Consider some one in Afganistan with one of these. No need to take a laptop, and thus one less gadget to lug around. Just send the video directly from the camera.

      But if this is intended as a consumer product, then I agree with you. It makes little sense.

      Steve M

      • While this doesn't make sense for a consumer grade camera today, it might make sense for a pro grade camera for use by reporters in the field.

        *NO* media professional would ever take a product like this seriously. Have you ever seen an electronic news gathering camera? It's cluttered up with enough buttons as it is, and the display has enough indicators to deal with without silly things like email and web browsers.
      • Professional video cameras will never have email or web browser or other useless junk. The purpose of a pro camera is to record the highest quality audio and video, at the highest possible resolution. There is a resolution and sound quality difference between pro DV cameras and "consumer" DV cameras, and about 3x the price difference as well. One of the most important things is current consumer cameras usually only have one CCD (the device that actually turns light into digital stream that can be stored on tape, etc), where all of pro cameras have 3 CCD's for each of red green and blue colors. All pro cameras have interchangeable lens system, where in a consumer camcorder you are stuck with whatever lens comes with it. And optics are definitely a lot better.
        Bottom line is, no sane reporter would ever take an equivalent of a gameboy cam (which is pretty much what this is compared to a real video camera) to afganistan.
    • Because we can! Why does a dog lick its eggs? Because it can!

  • Very cool (but they should lose the weband e-mail) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nijika ( 525558 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @01:48PM (#2569767) Homepage Journal
    Bluetooth enabled makes lots of sense. I'm glad to see digital imaging's finally hitting it's stride (that will help me in the long run). The web client and e-mail client make no sense though. Of all the things I'll be checking my hotmail account from, my Handycam is right at the bottom of the list. They could have saved themselves some development time by not putting that in there.

    Although maybe the idea is that you can e-mail pictures and movies on the fly to people.

    Hmm, I have to stop thinking while I'm typing.

  • Just what I need... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoarderPhreak ( 234086 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @01:53PM (#2569792)
    A camcorder that can surf the Web and send Email.

    I'd rather have better components and a cheaper price. Not crappy stuff jammed together, compromising other components and a higher price.

    It might be a neat gadget for "all in one" but it's always going to be a compromise. Especially since things change so rapidly in technology.

    I'll leave this one alone, just like the digital camera slash MP3 player... :-/

    • Ok, granted I'd never want to read /. on a camcorder, but I might want to e-mail a video I just made to my brother in Chicago. Maybe I could upload a video I made of Steve Balmer dancing around like an idiot to a humor website (ok, so someone already did that). All in all, this promises better ways to distribute images over the Internet than conventional means which typically require hooking up to a computer first.

      In my mind, its better that they use web browsing and e-mail technology to achieve these things rather than implement something of their own design that wouldn't work with any existing tools.
      • Yah, but it's not that hard with my older Sony Digital video camera to shoot a video, plug in my firewire cable, send the video to my hard drive, and then email it.

        Only drawback is I have to shut down Linux and dual boot to Windows. I haven't been able to figure out how to correctly specify the right IEEE-1394 parameters in the setup for Broadcast 2000 under Linux. I set it for IEEE-1394, but have no idea which port or channel to specify, nor have any idea how to find out. Any pointers?

      • Really, with the iLink interface it's not that difficult to send the file to your computer. From there you can edit the film or just send the raw clip through email.

        Besides, isn't it easier to type someone's email address with a keyboard than it would be with a series of toggles and buttons as you go through the alphabet and selecting one letter at a time.

        This convergence of technologies is not the least bit necessary, and I would ask for urine samples of every person in Sony that thought this was a good idea.

        • Personally, I bring my digital camera with me on vacation, but the laptop stays home. I think it'd be fun to mail some pictures home just by going to a local wireless access node.

          Ok, so there aren't any public access nodes, but maybe vacation spots like Disney World could put them in at their hotels. This kind of product is really about playing with the idea of what's possible rather than accepting the status quo.
      • From a camcorder?

        How fast do you think that wireless connection is really gonna be?

        • I've used one of these cameras, They are great fun.

          Step 1. take a few stills with it.

          Step 2. sit it next to your bluetooth enabled GPRS cell phone, (128Kb/sec each way)

          Step 3. pull up yahoo briefcase on its dinky wee screen.

          Step 4. upload all my photos 3 times faster then my modem could.

          I am really wanting to get one before I do a world tour next year. I'm already taking my Bluetooth/GPRS/GSM phone.
          And before you tell me that the data rates are ninja expensie, its still cheeper then an internet cafe.

          So to all those people that dont see the point of this...... trust me, after you have a play with it you will start dreaming up reasons why you NEEEED one
  • Someday soon, whether we like it or not, there will be a web-and-email chip made available. You install this single chip into any device with a screen and network hole, and you have a GUI-based web and email system ready to run.

    THAT will be the killer app of the decade, because it allows literally hundreds of new pieces of technology for a fraction of the price. Not just web pads, and camcorders, but web-enabled microwaves, fridge fronts, cars, e-books, boats, watches, etc.
    • Would be one that allows configuration over a web interface, and standard (or 802.11) ethernet. Then I can buy a new VCR, put it on my LAN, and use my browser to configure/run/record. Same with stereo components, dvd players, the microwave, all the clocks in your house, phones (callerid broadcast packet, anyone?) etc etc. Speaking of which, can you do this with a Tivo?

      Man, I wish I'd majored in EE with a focus on electronics and low level programming. I would love to create some of these devices.

      • "Man, I wish I'd majored in EE with a focus on electronics and low level programming. I would love to create some of these devices"

        You`d be better of getting a qualification in marketing! The hard works already been done - the technology is inside just about every European phone.

      • Yeah (Score:2)

        by wiredog ( 43288 )
        And as soon as someone finds a security hole you're applying patches to your VCR, stereo, microwave, etc. What's that? Everything's in ROM? Well, I guees you'll just have to replace the chips. Meanwhile, some skript kiddie just reset your VCR so it only records Britney videos, your microwave to only run at half power, and your clocks are all on different time zones.
        • Who said anything about making any of this accessible to the internet? We're talking LAN here. Ok, if you use 802.11, yeah, that could definitely be a problem. Perhaps they should all have an agreed upon standard IPSec implementation, and you could buy a cheap appliance to also put on your LAN whose sole purpose is to be a CA for all of the devices.
      • you mean like TINI [ibutton.com]

        pair that with an 802.11 and you're g2g.

        fun project eh?
      • I know I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this, but this type in inter-device communication is what JINI [sun.com] is designed for.
        There's a lot of marketing BS on the page, but the technology behind it is sound...
  • This seems like one of those combinations of products made because they can, not because there is or will be a need for it. I remember a combination mouse pad/label printer a few years ago that seemed equally odd. Just because we have the technology doesn't mean it is a good idea. The role of technology should be to give consumers what they want; this seems to be the opposite of that.

  • Another source for DCR-IP7 info (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @01:57PM (#2569833) Homepage Journal
    Looks like the story link is /.'ed. However, Digital Photography Review [dpreview.com] has this story with reams of specs and evaluation data. Read it whilst you can!

    • Re:Another source for DCR-IP7 info (Score:5, Informative)

      by Daniel Rutter ( 126873 ) <dan@dansdata.com> on Thursday November 15, 2001 @02:12PM (#2569932) Homepage
      > Looks like the story link is /.'ed.

      Yeah, yeah. Always happens. Bookmark the page (it only just went up, so there's no Google cache of it yet), come back later, spend the intervening time sending me money so I can afford a phatter server :-).

      > However, Digital Photography Review has this
      > story with reams of specs and evaluation data.

      Um... actually, that just looks like the reformatted press release to me. Phil Askey's camera reviews are superb, I agree, but that isn't one. I think I might have written the first real review of this widget to hit the Web. I'm not betting anything on that, though :-).

      To assuage all your poor Server Not Found souls, here's the text of the review's conclusion:

      Who's this camera for?

      Well, if you want a super-ultra-tiny camera, the DCR-IP7 is pretty much where it's at. But there are Mini DV cameras that aren't a great deal bigger. Sony's own DCR-PC9 [sonystyle.com.au], for instance, weighs less than 500 grams. JVC's GR-DVP3U [www.jvc.ca] weighs 350 grams, and is inconsequentially larger than the DCR-IP7.

      Mini DV cameras have better video quality than Micro MV, they're cheaper, they've all got i.LINK ports, and their i.LINK ports actually work with normal DV gear.

      So if you just want a minuscule travel-cam, this probably isn't the product for you.

      What if you really dig the idea of e-mail from your camera, for some reason?

      If you simply must have that feature, then this is the camera for you. Well, this or its bigger cousin, the DCR-PC120.

      But seeing as all you can do with this thing's "networking" is connect to a dial-up Internet account, I'm uncertain what use it is for the vast majority of users.

      No way are you going to be sending your intrepidly collected reportage from the field to the newspaper office over a mobile phone dial-up connection, even if there aren't any attachment file size limits. And if you're travelling the world, I doubt you want to phone home at great expense in order to send people grainy low-res video clips of your adventures.

      Frankly, I found the DCR-IP7 rather frustrating. Not because of usability issues, so much as missed opportunities. Here's this thing with FireWire and USB and Bluetooth, and (alleged) standard file format still and video input and output. And there just aren't enough simple elementary connections between those things. The large print giveth, the small print taketh away.

      You should be able to see this camera as a mass storage device via all three interfaces and just copy video from the tape without installing anything but a simple driver. You can't.

      You should be able to use the camera as a Windows Video device. You can't.

      Heck, you should be able to access the camera with a TWAIN driver. You can't.

      And because the camera uses Micro MV, you can connect it via i.LINK/FireWire to a DV device if you like, but it won't bloody work. So everything's funnelled through MovieShaker. Which sucks.

      Hey, Sony. Maybe MovieShaker is the talk of the town in Tokyo, or something, but would it kill you to put in an Expert Mode or something next time, and actually have six people test your software before you release it?

      You wouldn't think it'd be that hard. Include basic functions. Verify actual operation of said basic functions. Then include happy smiling faces and integrated techno video clip generators, if you must.

      If this camera cost a thousand Australian bucks, I'd cut it some slack, but it doesn't. It's stunningly expensive.

      The next time I see a Sony device with "Network" and "IP" in its name, I want to be able to just plug it into freakin' Ethernet, OK? Include FireWire and Bluetooth and 802.11b and RS-232 and RFC 1217 [sunsite.dk] if you want, but also put a simple RJ45 socket on the thing and give it a DHCP client and a basic HTTP interface. You can get those features in cheap and cheerful home Internet sharing boxes; I think you could manage to cram them into a camera.

      I, for one, would love an instant home-LAN video server camera dingus, especially if it could work as an Internet image source as well, which it could, with that simple little Web server built in. Webcams that can do this exist already - they're expensive, but so's this camera.

      Sony can make avant-garde bleeding-edge products that work really well. Their MVC-CD1000 digital still camera with its 77mm CD-R drive, for instance, is still almost as technologically impressive as it was when I reviewed [dansdata.com] it more than a year ago. But now you can buy new CD1000s for $US650 on eBay. That's half of the original list price.

      If the MVC-IP7 can be had for a mere $AUD2250 or so in a year's time, it might be worth getting. Micro MV doesn't have annoyingly bad image quality, and there ought to be more Micro MV-aware software and hardware around in a year, so you won't be stuck with Pokemon-themed McSoftware when you want to edit stuff. Or artificially constrained by silly format barriers.

      Right now, though, this camera's the video equivalent of a wild out-there impractical concept car that for some reason has made it into the dealerships. No sane person would want to drive it, but a fool and his money are welcome to try.

      If I were you, though, I'd hand the DCR-IP7 back to the booth babe.

      Thanks, but no thanks.

  • If anything, the problem with camcorders is that they let people take too much film. Who the hell can sit through 8 hours of vacation video footage? Even an hour could be dangerously close to boring you're audience to death.

    • If anything, the problem with camcorders is that they let people take too much film. Who the hell can sit through 8 hours of vacation video footage? Even an hour could be dangerously close to boring you're audience to death.


      Why do you think Apple is hyping iMovie?

      iMovie is one damn nice product. Dead simple to use: it took me less than 20 minutes to figure out virtually everything. Can do almost anything a non-professional wants- crop the junk, reorder the good stuff, put nice titles and transitions between the pieces, layer a music track over the whole thing and then dump it back out to tape or to Quicktime.

      I've got many hours of footage of my new baby: it's going to be cut down to about 15 minutes of the good stuff when I give tapes out to people who haven't been able to see him yet.

      Eric

    • The problem is not that six hours of film was taken the problem is that nobody ever takes the time to edit the footage. (how many hours of camra left on in a bag have you fast forwarded through). I don't think better editing tools would help, because that would involve sitting though the tape all over again.

      oh wait ,maybe you are right.

  • "Internet browsing on your toaster. Now you can catch up with your surfing while you make yourself breakfast!"

    Is the net this important to people? Why on earth would I need a web browser in my handicam? Can't they put the R&D money wasted on this isn't something more useful...like how to do better than a 1 hour recording time???

    • No, it is not. I wish these consumer electronics folks would WAKE UP and do the RIGHT thing with the popularity of home LANs these days. Namely the ability to configure and control their device using a web browser. So simple, yet they focus on this dumb needless shit instead.

      Imagine being able to set all of the clocks in your house with a single command (better yet, have them use ntp). Program your VCR with a web interface. Your stereo too. How about phones that can broadcast callerid info to the network, and listening clients would then get it? Callerid info could then display on your computer, or on your TV screen when a call came in. HOw about temperature and light controls too? (yeah, that's more home automation, but if they just made everything use standard tcp/ip and run its own webserver, no problem.)

      • Well, this is certinaly possible with the development of Bluetooth.

        However, why bother with wireless when all your appliances are WIRED TO AC in the first place?

        Tom's COMDEX Report on Netgear [tomshardware.com]

        I know that powerline networking has been avaliable in the past, but now that embedding network connectivity into a device is so trivial its the next logical step. Why bathe your house in more RF and use up the spectrum when your devices have to be plugged into the wall anyway?

        Obviously this goes along the line to EASE OF USE. No extra cables, when you plug in the power cable you're also hooking into the network! No need to make sure your Bluetooth devices are within range or are being blocked by walls.

        All we need now is a networking protocol as easy to setup as IPX.

      • You just described UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
  • I was at this LAN party and one of the guys had a digital camera running Doom on the view screen. Alas due to many beers I cannot remeber the camera make.

  • Convergence.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Teancom ( 13486 ) <david&gnuconsulting,com> on Thursday November 15, 2001 @02:00PM (#2569851) Homepage
    This isn't a new idea, but when are we going to stop calling things by one name? For instance, what makes this more of a digital camera, than a portable web client with video capture capabilities (aside from marketing)? When something can capture video, surf the net, send email, host a website, play videogames, and play mp3s, I call it a pc... I'm not saying that they should immediately switch naming schemes or anything, I'm just interested in where you guys think this is going. Where do you draw the line between a camera with extra features, and a pc with a camera?

    p.s. I'm not saying that this particular "camera" can do all those things, I'm theorizing that it will be only a matter of time before they can.
  • Web-enabled cell phone service is a joke. There have been articles about it not catching on in the States. Now Sony thinks that we need both a web browser and an email client built in to the camcorder with a 2.5" LCD?

    Sony has introduced the concepts of bloatware and feature creep into their camcorders. If I want to browse the Internet, I will use my home computer. I will not use my camcorder, my cell phone, my refridgerator, or anything other than my home computer.

    Except for a web-enabled toilet. Attach a swing arm with an Internet Terminal to my toilet and that, my friends, will work. And nothing else.

  • I was in Tokyo a few weeks ago, and a friend of mine boght one. It was kind of neat and considered buying one it was about 1680000 Yen (120Yen/Dollar avg). Considered buying one and went back and forth between various stored thinking about it. And remember how miserable bluetooth turned out to be (for now) and didn't think it was worth the expense. Another friend in Japan convinced finally that it wasn't worth it. It's neat for about 20 minutes when you have cute Japanese girls fighting for attention in front of the camera but....Ah wait a minute last my focus here... I liked the memory stick, but wish they had better still image resolution (640x480) yea I know it's not a digital camera, it's a digital video camera.
  • Why's everyone making everything smaller? Nuts ta that. I wanna surf the net on the WALL IN MY ROOM. When's that gonna happen at an affordable cost?
    • If you are talking about the Total Recall apartment, with full high resolution plasma's that are seemlessly integrated into the wall, approximately 10-15 years, unless there is a major breakthrough in lcd/plasma display manufacturing.

    • Re:Smaller!? (Score:3, Funny)

      by fobbman ( 131816 )
      You dolt! How on Earth would you carry a camcorder with a screen that big?

  • Sony DCR-PC115 and PC120 [letsgodigital.nl] are followups to PC100 and PC110 that also have Bluetooth internet connectivity. They also upgrade the CCD to 1.5 Megapixel.
  • Manual [sony.co.jp] Looks like the bluetooth in provided via memorystick slot? Anyone translate?
  • yes, email feature is nice if accompanied by the ability to take hi-rez stills.
    It is cool to have some basic visual effects, like sepia, negative, b/w, jitter, etc...
    it is also cool to have good combination of optical and digital zoom.
    it is almost friggin necessary to have a firewire dump (or maybe, 100BT?)
    realtime alpha blending would be nice...

    but hey, that would make it TOO MUCH LIKE A FSCKING CAMERA, wouldn't it?

    they got this idea backwards -

    what they should've done, is put a basic web _server_ on it with a slew of webcam-ish features, so you could use it for security, or whatever else.

    just my 2 cents
  • And it's got a super-tiny one hour cassette, USB, i.LINK and Bluetooth connectivity, a Web browser, an e-mail client, and a quite long list of other features.
    Warning! If you:
    • videotape a sex act
    • visit whitehouse.com
    • download binaries from rec.porn.donkeys.moderated
    • and get enough spam email
    all at once, you'll create a wormhole to an alternate universe where the goatse.cx guy is actually found attractive.

  • I think Edison Carter of Network 23(on Max Headroom) would appreceate a camera like this.
  • Enough already! I don't need yet another web-enabled device. Okay, firewire from a DV cam is useful if I want to edit video, but I don't need to cruise the web on my handycam, and the last thing I want to hear is how the next Outlook worm has managed to hack my camera!

  • pff (Score:2)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 )
    Need to get a product hyped to geeks? Just take any random device, attach an LCD screen to it, and give it a webbrowser.

    Stir, mix, wait a week and it'll be posted on Slashdot. Give it a month and you'll be able to buy it on thinkgeek.

    Coming soon, a toaster that has an xterm!
  • Is /. now an official PR repository ? It seems more and more accepted submissions (even the latest Ask Slashdot) are from some marketing department.

    Weird.
  • This device hardly seems like it was very well thought out, and not at the execution stage but at the *concept* stage.

    I can see the pointy-hair-boss speaking with the hardware group: "People love email. People love surfing the web. People love home videos. I've got it!" This device illustrates the problem with convergence today -- a rapid advance towards bundling more and more technology into a smaller and smaller space with little thought given to the utility of the device.

    I'm surprised they didn't decide to incorporate a recepticle to hold 44oz beverages. After all... "people love thirstbusters".

  • So, every program expands until it can send e-mail.

    I guess this now applies to hardware as well.
  • THIS is an example of converging technologies? Gimme a break. How about some useful convergance:

    I imagine 1 device:
    -cell phone (digital & analog of course)
    -color pda

    Ok. This has been done. But add:

    -mp3 player (stereo sound output with decently fast processor)
    -LARGE storage (several gigs)
    -small enough to fit into a shirt pocket (but large enough so the screen isn't tiny)
    -gaming buttons (emulate a Gameboy Advance, SNES, Nintento, Genesis, etc)
    -battery life of a week or so
    -durable enough so I can drop it and not have to worry about it
    -hooks up to optional DVD player for those long trips (make the screen 16:9 if tipped sideways
    -toss in 802.11b and bluetooth for S&G

    NOW we're talking convergance.
  • For anyone curious, AUSTRALIAN$4,400 is US$2,278-odd(*), which would buy you a really nice three-chip camcorder like a Sony TRV-900 or Canon GL1.

    If you're serious about high-quality images, this thing is clearly junk :-(.

    D

    (*) I closed the window a little too early, so I don't remember the amount to the dollar, but that's pretty close.
  • Yes yes, that's all well and good, but tell me this:

    When can I finally get radio stations from a taco?
    • haha....brilliant!

      new idea for taco bell:

      customized restaraunt music. Never do you have to listen to the same radio station as the person never to you while you scarf down those tacos.

  • Maybe the piano would automatically digitize and MP3-encode everything you play. When you finish, you could push some button and it would email the piece to whoever you want. Or something like that.

    Some folks hear about devices sending emails or surfing the net and wonder just who in the world would want to surf the web through a camcorder or digital camera or whatever. A lot of people I talk to think that features like these are unnecessary junk to make something look high-tech. Well, I think this particular camera is really cool because it has all these connectivity capabilities and the ability to surf the net. Web connectivity for a camera or whatever can actually be a very useful feature, if you stop to think about it for a moment. At our shop, we have a Sony digital camera that operates with a floppy disk. On many occasions, we take a picture of a work in progress and email it to the customer (or to an employee at one of the other plants). This involves finding a blank floppy, taking the required photo(s), finding a computer nobody's using right now, copying the files to the hard drive (well, that's optional I suppose), opening an email message, attaching the photo and finally emailing it to the recipient. Wouldn't it be much better if you could take the pictures and then (through some interface or other--I don't quite know how this works on this camera), put in the email address of the recipient, choose which photos to send, punch in a brief message and hit a 'send' button? No floppy, no computer, no nothing. Well, maybe it isn't THAT useful, but I think that in due time, many things like cameras will have these features and it won't be considered such a big deal that some device can send an email. And furthermore, people will wonder how the heck we ever survived without being able to send an email from the washing machine or whatever.

  • This can go in the dumb ideas hall of fame... now i can pay that little bit extra for something pointless that i would be better off choosing separately.

    Why doesn't someone do this:

    -Flat touch screen (decent colour, 16:9, and viewable in landscape or portrait)

    -Add a sound jack

    -_No_ processing power and no memory (except enough to drive systems (BIOS) and store a frame of video etc..(that way it doesn't need an expansion slot, and it won't get obsolete so fast, it can be thin and cheap. (a dumb terminal)

    -Instead of a CPU, it sends touch screen data, and receives the video data for the screen (encrypted) wirelessly (IR, radio, etc) The CPU could be a small module you keep in your pocket, the laptop in your briefcase, your mp3 player, camcorder (use it as the viewfindere, digital camera, or mobile (the mobile could for example act as a gateway to connect you to the internet etc...), car, gps, pc, All these devices would need to have a compatible wireless thingies and enough power to drive the screen etc. Also, public places could be installed with transmitters which the device could connect to - for example, you walk into an airport and the device picks up a signal as you walk in, you touch the options on the screen (powered by the airports computer system) allowing you to get a map showing your position, directions to the gate, shops, flight info, internet access etc. All powered by the network computer, not the pad. You could also stream video (bandwidth allowing). Because it would be just a dumb terminal, you could make variations that were all compatable - screen on a watch, cheap black and white, A4 sized, flexi, glasses (donno how the touch would work on that :), wall mounted (use a lazer ponter instead of touch for armchair viewing), you could have a transmitter connected to your pc and just use it around the house

    I might sound allot like a wireless web pad thingy but im looking at something dumber here, no web browser builtin, that means no software going out of date, full choice of what system you want to use, and a cheaper product.
  • For a bunch of techies, there's not much imagination here. I can't get to the information on the Sony unit in question, but there are plenty of uses for a TCP/IP-enabled camera or camcorder.

    Ricoh already sells a digital still camera with an IP stack, mail and FTP clients and a PC Card slot that will take a netowrk or modem card. Gimmicky? Nope. For surfing and checking your mail? Nope. What it lets you do is email or FTP images directly from the camera. If you're a traveling real-estate or newspaper photographer, what could be more immediate than that? No trip back to the hotel, no stopping at a service bureau--just connect to your data-enabled cellphone (or relay via Bluetooth! or a nearby 802.11b access point!) and send out that lo-res picture you just took.

    Just because the US is still seemingly years away from 2.5G or 3G wireless data service, that doesn't mean Japan is. Hell, if Metricom hadn't called it a day, even that would be a compelling way to send out brief low-res clips.

    Sure, we're a ways away from being able to transmit full-resolution DV over the net from a handheld camera, but that doesn't mean putting the functionality in now won't find an audience for the things it can do now.

    Those videophones TV war reporters have been using during the past month in Afghanistan aren't hi-res or high-bandwidth either, but that didn't make them useless.
  • It needs an RJ45 for Ethernet (10/100), to record mpeg directly onto it's media, and an FTP server so I can pull the videos off. I want to be able to "close" an mpeg video and start a new one (i.e., multiple videos on the media, uniquely named for ftp). This will let me use the device with any machine having an Ethernet card. No BlueTooth, 802.11b, iLink needed, and much cheaper (and faster). Keep it simple; the device has a simple purpose. You can add functionality without complexity, but that doesn't seem to be the way these things are done.
  • ok, after that peulent opening...

    I've got a Ricoh camera that comes with similar capabilities - it can send email and do dialup. Part of its software sute is a dialin server that runs on your desktop so you can 'phone em in'.Its quite handy for some, absolutely useless is for others

    If you're a journo and have get your photos back to a home office for processing or whatever, its easier to hav it all in one device than lugging around cameras, laptop and such just to get them sent 'home'.

    Much easier to just phone home from the camera. Its convergence in a good way.

    If you don't need the features, don't pay extra to buy them.

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