Sony DCRTRV460 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom | 
| Brand: Sony
List Price: $714.70
Buy New: $649.99
You Save: $64.71 (9%)
New (1) Used (6) from $359.00
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 5163
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Floppy Disk Drive: None
Monitor Size: 250
Includes Software: Yes
Optical Zoom: 20
Digital Zoom: 50
Connectivity: IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
Display Size: 2.5
Maximum Focal Length: 50
Minimum Focal Length: 2.5
Maximum Resolution: 290000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 5.4
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 7 x 6.9
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: DCR-TRV460
Model: TRV460
UPC: 027242643116
EAN: 0027242643116
ASIN: B0001BW0U6
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New open Box!!! Complete
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| Features:
| • | Digital8 Handycam camcorder and digital still camera with 460,000-pixel CCD | | • | 20x optical zoom lens (digital zoom to 990x) with Super SteadyShot image stabilizer | | • | 2.5-inch rotating LCD and black-and-white viewfinder | | • | Low-light recording settings, Memory Stick Pro slot, and analog-to-digital conversion ability | | • | NP-FM30 InfoLithium Rechargeable Battery |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Digital8 record/play, Hi8/8mm play only * digital photo mode * MPEG Movie EX mode * 460,000-pixel CCD * 2-1/2" color touchpanel *
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 Great Quality Picture August 2, 2004
G. CALICO (PELHAM, AL USA)
111 out of 114 found this review helpful
Purchased this camcorder about a week ago. Ease of operation and a great operators manual help sort out technical items. Picture quality utilizing only standard grade 8mm tape is excellent. I can only imagine the more expensive metal particle or metal evaporated tapes may have even higher quality pictures. Have not had time to check out the camera picture quality using the memory stick. I do not expect any disappointments. Sony make a terrific camcorder product. Consumers reports recommends this as one of their "Best Buys" for digital camcorders. Sony & Panasonic both continually excell in the catagory as "Models requiring the least amount of repairs" or "Most trouble-free manufacturers". The battery that comes with the unit gives approximately 67 minutes of recording time on a normal charge. A full charge will give approximately 74 minutes. Recommend purchasing the FM-50 battery for extended recording/playing time and for nothing else, simply to have a back-up. I own a DVD recorder that allows me to transfer audio & video from my camcorder to DVD's . The camcorder has an A/V output for the consumer interested in transfering their home movies/digital images to DVD's. It also features an S-Video output for capturing even higher quality video.
Some of the bad things:
- The camcorder does not come with a portable/cordless charger. You have to plug the batteries into the camcorder and plug the adapter/charger into the camcorder to charge. Purchase an additional external charger for simplicity.
- The camcorder does not come supplied with a memory stick. Consider purchasing at least 128 M. That way you can get approximately 80 minutes of recording time.
- The battery supplied FM-30 (see above) is not adequate.
Some of the good things:
- Quality product
- Image & sound quality excellent
- Auto focus & stabilization also excellent
- Great zoom feature
All in all, a fantastic product with great performance and features at a very reasonable price. If you want to get into digital video recording for less that $ 500.00, try this one.
GAC
Perfect transition camcorder January 22, 2005
Jonno (Sandy Spring, MD)
72 out of 72 found this review helpful
My old 8mm camcorder died around Thanksgiving leaving me with 15 years worth of home movies and no way to view them. The TRV460 was at a great price point and perfectly bridges the gulf between analog and digital. I wanted to transfer the keepers stuff to DVDs and edit the really good stuff in to movies. I'm far from done, but I've worked with this camcorder enough to pass on some tips.
CAMCORDER: Easy to use. Pictures are so much sharper than my analog camera (I know, no surprise here, but it had a wow factor for me). The camera is smaller than my old one, a little bigger than my two hands wrapped together. The touchscreen is easy to use - plan on studying the manual though. It's all in there and it's easy to read, but you have to approach it like a text book. It powers up quickly. Two things to beware of -- (1) the tape inserts through the bottom and this that if you use a screw tripod adapter you have to take it off the to insert a tape, (2) there are some features that only work on movies recorded to DV tape vs. recording straight to the memorystick - for example when you record to the memory stick it only records in mono.
SOFTWARE: Other reviews are correct when they pan the software that comes with the camera. I bought Adobe Premiere Elements and it is great. I bought the adobe software from amazon - they were offering a Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements combo that I opted for after reading numerous reviews. I've used the full version of photoshop for years and the user interface of elements is dumbed-down but still has a familiar touch and enough features to do everything I want. Wait a minute - this is a camcorder review, sorry for the tangent.
FIREWIRE/USB2.0: Elements will capture movies recorded to the memorystick via the USB2.0, but to do the same for movies recorded to tape you need a firewire cable. If your PC does not have a firewire port, you can just add a PCI firewire/usb2.0 card onto your motherboard (costs less than $20 for the card). I had bought the card at retail a year ago. But camcorders need a firewire cable with a 6 pin to 4 pin configuration. Found one on line recently (listing: 6ft IEEE 1394 FireWire Cable 6pin-4 DV ILINK IPOD SONY) for less than a buck. Once you plug the firewire cable into the TRV460, you control the camera from the computer through the premiere software - no special settings or adjustments needed. By the way, you can do some camcorder to PC transfers using the USB2.0 cable and the Sony Picture Package software - but "clunky" is too kind.
Along with the camcorder, there are some necessary accessories. I looked for low-cost options on all of these and was pretty successful. I'll pass them on here - for what they're worth.
DIGITAL TAPES: Sony makes many different types of tapes that are good for recording digital. The Sony Digital8 Camcorder Tapes (at first I thought these were the only ones that would work) costs $20 a pair at retail. There are many other 8mm tapes that are compatible for less than half this cost (check out Sony's website for compatibility).
MEMORY STICK: Again I went online to find a good price on a memory stick. But the stick I bought was not compatible with this camcorder (listing: SanDisk 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo Sony 256 MB DSC-T1 +). The camcorder would only intermittently recognize the stick (mostly it wouldn't). Searches on the web showed that many people had this problem. The kind customer service dept at SanDisk agreed to check it out and said they would probably replace it. They did and the newer version of the same memorystick works fine. While I was waiting I bought a Sony 256MB memory stick at a retail store and, of course, it works fine. I got a memory card reader to plug into my USB port (listing: USB MS/MEMORY STICK CARD READER) so I could transfer movies to the PC without involving the camcorder.
ANALOG TAPE TO MEMBORY STICK TRANSFER: One cool thing I learned about the camera is you can copy scenes from an analog tape to the memory stick all from within the camcorder. With the touch screen monitor, it is very easy to do. This is great if you want to compile selected scenes (from the huge pile of old 8mm tapes) without sitting at the computer. I did a lot of this analog tape-to-memorystick xfer (using just the camera) while sitting around the fire with my family - it made me a little more sociable with the family than if I were staring at the computer.
BATTERY: Another reviewer posted some tips on non-Sony batteries. I took an even cheaper approach that worked great. On line I bought a charger (listing: CHARGER for SONY NP-F550 NP-FM50 NP-QM71 QM91 BATTERY) for less than a fiver and a high capacity battery (listing: SONY NP-QM71 NP-FM70 DCR-TRV950 2800mAh BATTERY NEW) for less than fifteen bucks.
So that's it. I feel like the only splurge was on the tape editing software. I could have stayed with the free Sony Picture Package - but the Adobe is so much easier and does tons more. If you amortize it over the hours you spend on editing, the $100 bucks or so is not that much.
My PC is a off-brand clone with a AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU running at 2.07 MHz, wtih 512MB ram, running XP Home Edition SP2 and a ATI AIW 8500DV videocard. I like this camcorder a lot!
 Good but not many options with Batteries-Here are some August 29, 2004
Serrano (Florida)
48 out of 53 found this review helpful
Here you have some options for the battery monopoly:
Power 2000 ACD701 1800mAh $34.99 <=> Sony NP-FM50 $50.58
Power 2000 ACD702 3600mAh $59.99 <=> Sony NP-QM71 2760mAh $69.94
Power 2000 ACD703 5400mAh $69.99 <=> Sony NP-QM91 4140mAh $107.99
Power2000 Batteries have an awful white color but much cheaper.
The charger for these batteries is the POWER 2000 QP7400 AC / DC Turbo Charger for SONY Batteries for $29.99 comes with 100v-220V inputs and car adapter. The Sony equivalent is the Sony bctrm Compact Battery Charger for M for $46.95 without the 110v - 220v input and car adapter.
I hope this will help to solve the battery problem. This will also work for TRV-328, 260, DVD101, 201 and PC-109, 330 among others.
New Sony Digatal8 Great Choice For Consumers February 24, 2004
Brian Dillard (Orange County, CA)
47 out of 64 found this review helpful
I started using Digital8 Camcorders when they first came out. I had the Sony TRV-820 which had a built in Printer. It was a great camera, albeit bulky. The printer feature got old real quick, though it was cool. Early this year I decided to upgrade to MiniDV until I saw that Sony was releasing this camcorder. In my experience, Sony Digital8's are just as good as MiniDV. While I admit not ever owning a MiniDV camcorder, I am basing my judgement on video footage I have seen. Plus, this Camcorder is a few hundred dollars cheaper than the closest MiniDV Camcorder with similar features. I was leaning towards the Canon MiniDV line of camcorders, but after reading all the negative reviews about quality in low light, I decided to try the Digital8 once again. I have owned a few analog Camcorders before moving to Digital. Before my Sony, I owned 2 different Samsung Camcorders. Both ate tapes like starving kids at a candy factory. When I first got my Sony TRV820 I was SO impressed. In all the years I had owned it, it NEVER ate a tape and NEVER had any problems. That alone makes me want to get the new TRV460. Plus, the video quality was great, even in low light (though, low light is obviously produces much less attractive video than what good light produces). The TRV460 is more compact than the older Digital8's, it has more features (though I'm giving up the 4" screen that was on my 820). Plus, it can play old analog 8MM tapes, like the TRV820, which is an awesome bennifit. While I do plan on moving to MiniDV soon, I don't want to get a low-end MiniDV. I would rather have a high-end Digital8 and save up for a high end MiniDV because I doubt low-end MiniDV's are as good as this camcorder. I will update this review with specifics as soon as I recieve my TRV460. At $399, this camcorder is well worth the price. You get AD/DA converters (convert VHS footage to Digital using a Computer). Plus you get a 20X optical zoom, which is great and means you can be pretty far from the action but still get good footage. Some people prefer to be up close since they can get sound, but honestly, how ofter do you get good sound in any recording? I usually shoot video strictly for the video and then I fill it up with audio tracks and music when editing. It creates a much better visual experience than people walking by the camcorder every few seconds saying "Hi!"
TRV460 Great Camera - don't let new battery type scare you April 12, 2004
43 out of 43 found this review helpful
An Earlier Post stated that "Only sony batteries can be used" in the TRV460. Wrong, only infolithium batteries can be used. No more NiCads but plenty of non-sony brand batteries will work just fine in the camera.I purchase CE brand infolithiums "NP-QM71 battery for Sony Li-Ion 7.2V 2400mAh (kq)", the cost is $25 compared to $75 to $100 for the Sony, and they work great. The camera is fantastic, my only complaint would be the small hard to reach zoom control on top, but other than that a great camera. Don't let the battery issue scare you off, just have to use infolithiums, Sony or Generic is up to you. This is the perfect Camera to go digital and still be backward compatible with all those 8mm and Hi-8mm tapes.
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