An Ideal piece of Storing your memories . Review on Sony DCR-TRV330

This genre of Camcorders are compact and continue to improve with time. This Digital equipment can readily be 'understood' by your PC with the internet usage convenience at your finger tips & commonplace. This is an ideal Model packing most of the features you ever desire. The Maximum Optical Zoom lens 25X is highest in its category. The next Model 20E costlier by almost Rs 6000 has only 10X. This TRV-330E has a more improved sibling (TRV-340E) with added features like MPEG videostreaming through USB port into your PC (Than you can burn CDs to watch it on your home VCD players). It also has Memory Stick of 8MB (earlier 4MB) which can also record Movie in MPEG format (for that short memory space) which you can directly download thru' USB port into your PC and share it on Net instantly. The cassette recorded movie will consume time as it would have to played for that length of time and random access of the movie clippings is not possible. For storing high-quality video, you need to have a Fire-Wire (IEEE 1394) port on your PC which will be linked to the DV-out of your camcorder & thereon you can download DV quality video streams which you can convert later to the desired format(s) provided with the software viz realvideo, MPEG1 (VCD Format), MPEG2 (SVCD format for high still picture quality), VHS, SVHS & finally DV (The highest quality possible in the recorder). I would strongly recommend STUDIO DV Version8.3 even if you have TRV-340E. The package comes with Fire-wire PCI Card with cable supporting the port & the 4-pin DV output on your camcorder. The only pinch I notice is the quality of still Photos. It gives you less than 0.5 Megapixel which is very low for a general photo quality. And if you really want to have the best of both the worlds you have to shell out another 30000 to 40000 for having a high quality photography. But that is unnecessary. It has to be essentially a video camera which this is. AN IMPORTANT TIP-To have a better night-time or low light (normal night time lighting, tube light, bulb or twilight sunset etc) recording, record at Exposure setting to ''SUNSETMOON''. Video light for this camera will require two upgradations-1. Video light of Rs. 3000 to 4000 (minimum) 2. Higher capacity Battery Pack of 10hr costing Rs. 7000. Otherwise you can avoid this expenditure and try the setting mentioned for a fairly decent, snowfree video recording. For a good still images better try to still the snaps from the PC when you download in DV format. The software has the provision in Studio DV. OR above all go for separate 2.0 Megapixel (atleast) and that will be awesome. It been an impulse decision to buy this piece of equipment. Had lost those six valuable years of my daughter growing till the moment I could buy it. Memories cannot be weighed in terms of money. If you have the margin go for these handheld videocams. That is what motivated me to buy the same. Now it is almost 2 years that I own this TRV-330 & have precious moments captured in motion to see & revive them in our later years. And that will be much more fun than anything in this world would matter.