JVC HD Everio Camcorder and Share Station

JVC Company of America, 1700 Valley Road, Wayne, NJ 07470 (973) 317-5000 www.jvc.com. Camcorder: $1,299.99; Share Station: $399.95.

I recently bought my first high-def television, joining the ranks of the 60 million U.S. households expected to own at least one HD set in 2008. So I figured it was time to check out some consumer-grade HD video gear, starting with JVC's GZ-HD3 Everio camcorder and its optional DVD back-up tool, the CU-VD40 Share Station.

HD Everio: Instead of using tape, this three-CCD camcorder records up to five hours of high-definition (1440 x 1080) video directly onto a 60-gigabyte hard drive. That's significantly less resolution than the 1920 x 1080 purists might expect from a camera calling itself HD. Not being a purist, I'll just cut to the chase. How did the stuff I shot on the Everio look on my new HDTV? Pretty good. Not stunning National Geographic quality, mind you—it's still home video. But you do get the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio and a noticeable amount of detail that standard video would miss.

Share Station: When loaning digital video cameras to teachers and students, I've found that they expect to have a finished product to take away as soon as possible after shooting and they want to be able to play it. Anywhere. The optional Share Station helps with some of that. Connect the Everio and the camera will automatically display a DVD authoring menu, allowing you to copy selected scenes or everything you've shot. The burning process is slow, but it works, and you can play the DVD directly from the Share Station on your HDTV, or take the disk to go. But it won't work on a standard DVD player. The Share Station burns only data disks, saving scenes in a proprietary (.TOD) file format. You'll need editing software (a basic software suite is supplied) that can recognize the files—plus plenty of time to scratch your head—if you want to create a finished product that's playable elsewhere. That's disappointing, but it's not JVC's fault. There are currently only two optical disk formats designed to handle HD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. Until a standard emerges and cheap players proliferate, HD video will continue to be difficult to share even as it becomes easier to produce.