The Silicon Valley Peripherals cameras and camcorders are great gadgets at a first glance. Many features, including picture and movie making, MP3 playback, voice recording, etc. combined with relatively large LCD screen and VERY luring price make SVP products virtually irresistible. However, the price has to have a reason for it. There are a couple of things, which should be pointed out before anyone purchases a SVP product. First of all, the overall quality and design does not quite reach the level of the more expensive cameras/camcorders. For example the HDDV 8800 has a bulky and cumbersome look, even though it is not that big. It's LCD hinge gives a somewhat uncertain feeling, it wiggles and is not tight enough.
The buttons on the HDDV 8800 are very little and especially a joy-stick like button is almost impossible to use with just a little bit larger hands.
The menus are confusing, in many cases not logical and hard to browse through thanks to complexity and small buttons.
Earlier versions do not support 2GB SD cards and the newer versions do not support 4GB SD cards.
The video quality, especially in slightly darker conditions is poor and the sound recording is even worse. Manufacturer claims 30fps video, however, the video looks more like 15fps, it is jerky, blurred, faint with poor sound. Very unsuitable for recording fast moving objects, fine for shooting a movie of your offspring or a dog, especially outside under the bright sky. I have prepared a video using one of the more expensive SVP - HDDV1800, which retails at about $130. This video is the highest quality video you will ever get from SVP at this price level. The video can be found here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RlNsgBaVAYo
The still picture quality is rather better than the video quality, but the camera tends to set the exposure at long periods, making it hard to capture a clear picture. The colors are again very faint. Unusable in darker conditions, flash is useless.
But the worst of the worst we have found is that sometimes the movie files and also the images will cause explorer.exe or most other programs operating under Windows XP to crash.
Most of the camcorders do not have zoom. Be ware of that, as it is a important feature.
For the price, it makes nice videos and nice pictures, but do not expect anything amazing. Expect a quality of the cheapest camcorder combined with the cheapest camera minus some extra points.
We would recommend this "All-in-one" to younger users who want to have a nice camera for a little price and who will withstand some imperfections.