My Escape from Digital Camcorder Buying Hell

I just finished what should have been a simple job: Finding a new digital camcorder for my parents in time for a family vacation. (When your title is "technology editor," you can't refuse family requests for tech support or tech shopping.) Fair enough. I speak microprocessors and virtualization fluently. I can navigate techno mumbo-jumbo. I thought this camcorder shopping job would be a one-night effort. Wrong! Memo to camcorder vendors: You guys still don't get it. And I mean you really don't get it. Buying any technology product in 2008 should not be this complicated.

Here's a look at what I learned. Maybe it will help some of you readers who will similarly be asked to sort through camcorders in time for summer vacations. And maybe it will wake up you consumer electronics vendors and retailers. If my experience is any indication, you guys are not thinking like your customer. (Note to CIOs for these companies: I sure hope that you're investing in technology to help the business mine and analyze customer comments in online forums.)

The starting scenario: I wanted a digital camcorder of medium quality from a well-known vendor. (I didn't need the world's fanciest model, but I never buy cheapo models, or from unknown manufacturers.) I wanted one that would play nicely with Macbook laptops (since this is what my parents and I both use at home) and with Apple's iMovie 08 software (since I wanted to use this for the video editing.)

I thought, before I researched, that we'd end up spending about $500. The "sweet spot" for most kinds of consumer electronics gizmos is $299, and has been for years; but digital camcorders are still kind of new, so I expected to pay a premium.

I go online and start researching digital camcorders. I find out that first I have to decide which kind of media I want the camera to use: There's a confusing array of options here, such as miniDV tapes, hard drives, and removable memory cards. None of the vendor sites make it clear to me what the pros and cons of each type of media are. I start reading articles from CIO's sister publications, PC World and Macworld, and I sort out the media question. MiniDV is older, but the pros seem to outweigh the cons.

Then I start reading about people buying camcorders only to find that the video output can't be edited by Apple iMovie software. This is what I want to avoid. I start to research this issue and get drawn into forum discussions by confused consumers about video codecs, especially something called AVCHD (advanced video codec high definition), affecting certain Sony and Panasonic cameras. Due to this hitch, one article tells Macbook users to avoid hard drive camcorder models completely. Another article says Macbook owners can use some hard drive camcorder models, but not others.

I give up for the night and apologize to my mother that this is taking so long. She pipes in (innocently) with "well, the guy at the [deleted to protect the guilty] store says Apple Macbooks are the best, they work with everything, and not to worry." Uh-huh. I bet he did.

Next day, I keep reading online, but remain confused. I put out a request to my Facebook friends, many of whom, as you might guess, write about technology. Any advice for me on camcorders and Macbooks and iMovie 08? Nope. I spam my work colleagues at CIO. Any help there? Nope. None of them understand this topic yet, either. "Tell us what you learn, please!" a couple of them write back.

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