Samsung introduced the FC-DC164, yet another DVD-based camcorder at CES, and will ship it March 1. Even if your mind is wandering toward those camcorders that use hard disks or even flash drives, or those more-advanced shooters that venture into HD territory, go with one like this if you’re looking to save some money. That’s because for $450, you get a lot of camcorder for your cash with this Samsung model. Recording in MPEG 4, it’s a polyglot when it comes to various types of writable DVDs, where it’s equally happy with all of them except the dual-layer DVD-R.
Its specs are a cut above what you might expect from a lower-end camcorder, with a 680k/1.1 megapixel CCD, a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD, a whopping 33x optical zoom (try holding that one still when it’s zoomed all the way in, cowboy) and USB 2.0. Plus, if you want to take some stills, it has a 4-in-1 flash memory card slot, and then you can print those pics directly from the camera to a printer using PictBridge. Not a bad deal if you’re still content with shuffling around lots of disks. Sure beats tape.
Samsung launches SC-DC164 DVD Camcorder [MobileMag]
