New World Camcorder

Sept. 5, 2007 — -- In retrospect, it was a pretty simple idea. Take the mysterious appeal behind "America's Funniest Home Videos," remove the insipid host and prize money, put it on the Web and let anyone contribute.

Last year's $1.6 billion acquisition of time-wasting YouTube by time-saving Google put a price tag on what any casual Internet user already knew — video had taken its place alongside longtime Web staples of text, graphics and audio.

The sharing of thousands of millions of videos might lead one to believe that the camcorder is at the height of its popularity, but it isn't so. According to NPD point-of-sale information, camcorder unit sales were down 6 percent year over year through June.

A relatively small percentage of YouTube's users upload its video and they often use the more PC-friendly digital camera or ever-present cell phone rather than a camcorder. The long zoom and recording time of camcorders are increasingly relegating them to capturing such special events as vacations, birthdays and weddings. While slim digital cameras and cell phones can easily slip into a pocket ready to capture the next small domestic animal that happens to skateboard past, most camcorders are relatively bulky affairs that must accommodate tapes and DVDs, the latter providing a convenient playback path to the television.

One area that major camcorder vendors have been pursuing in earnest has been high-definition camcorders, available with practically every media available in standard definition, including tape (HDV), optical disc and hard drive (often using a standard called AVCHD).

Hitachi has announced that it will soon offer a camcorder that can record on mini-Blu-ray discs, a high-definition counterpart to mini-DVDs that is being challenged by the backers of rival format HD-DVD. Upgrading quality is a familiar formula for success in the consumer electronics world, but not necessarily one that will enable the camcorder to compete better with the digital camera in terms of convenience.