Dear Michael

I bought this thing before christmas. The hardware is great except if you use it at low light (no smooth video for fast motions) but the software is a disaster. There is no MPEG4.2 AVC1 CODEC available, so the only software you can use to work on your videos is the ULEAD stuff that comes with the camera. The Nero software doesn't play MPEG4 as promised, and my Pinnacle Studio 11 doesn't recognize the videaos at all.

So in sum, it's a disaster. Similar to buying a Porsche that has no firmware for the injection engine.

Please try on your own before praising this stuff.

Bernd

"Oddly though, it takes 7MP stills"

They increased the resolution in order to compensate for the lower optical range. A higher resolution allows them to increase the digital zoom a bit more. It's always better to buy a camera that may have a lower resolution but a higher optical zoom than a camera with a higher resolution but lower optical zoom.

How do they fit HD image in 873kb/s stream?