An old vet that holds it's own with newer cams
Written: Feb 01 '04 (Updated Feb 01 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great image and physical appearance , quality CCD optics. Inexpensive now.
Cons: No horizontal pivot ,proprietary codecs are just plain bad.
The Bottom Line: If you love to do things yourself and you run across one of these , get it. You "out-of-the-box" experience types should look elsewhere.
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| fearfax's Full Review: Kodak DVC325 Web Cam |
I've owned this cam for nearly four years , I've never felt compelled to replace it.,though it's seen a few others come and go. Unfortunately it seems that the quality products that respond to active user involvement have left the market (US Robotics Home Connect & the Intel ProPC and Deluxe models come to mind). The design is still eye-catching and the solid ,heavy base makes it very stable. Which is a good thing ,because you can't secure it unless you'll never move it-there's no panning pivot in the design. There is however a quality threaded insert for a using a small tripod and it's also notebook-able with the supplied adhesive backed clip ,but with no horizontal pivot I can't see using the cam with a notebook. You can't have everything , I guess.
What you CAN have however is a very crisp ,sharp well-saturated image-if you're willing to use the latest drivers and manually set up the camera. Firstly , the standard Kodak driver with it's proprietary compression is slow ,fuzzy and bloom-y. Using the included Intel 420 or the RGB codecs transform the camera-the frame rate is vastly improved and video amp controls actually work. The controls don't always retain their settings in between sessions , but that's a minor quibble for me , anyway.
The latest driver works in all versions of MS Windows I've tried it with , I've used the cam in everything from pre-SE '98 to XP Pro-but installing it in 2K and XP gets you the expected "not digitally signed" nag , of course.
Long may it run (g)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
fearfax
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Member: Ray
Location: Fairfax ,California - USA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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