A Lightweight Compact Solution

I was looking for a case that did NOT turn a lightweight & compact camcorder (Sony DCR-HC35) into a heavy large item to carry around whilst out & about, the LCS-VAC lived up to my expectations, it can hold (in addition to the camcorder)1-2 spare tapes, the remote control & a spare battery OR additional small still camera. If you do not take the mains charger with you everywhere you walk to, then this is the case for you. I Paid £[...] including postage which is much cheaper then anywhere else I have seen since.

sony t300

I decided to buy the sony t300 despite some negative reviews from professional critics. I'm so glad i did it's a super camera takes fantastic pictures and the quality of the images is great. The 3.5 LCD touch screen is really fun to use and is one of the best features about this camera amongst others. The recording and videoing is simply amazing and the slideshow with a choice of music for me puts this camera well above the competition. I had owned a canon ixus 970 which i thought wasn,t that good at all so i sold it, the sony t300 beats it hands down. I bought this camera direct from Amazon (better customer service) and not from one of there sellers who i have no faith in.

Best Gadget

Just bought this player and I have to say that it is possibly the best gadget I have bought for a long time. Having had Walkman's before, from the early days of tape cassette, buying another was a simple choice.

The process of loading music is very intuitive and I did require any bespoke software other than standard systems already installed on my laptop.

The sound quality is great and the battery just seems to go on and on.

I have no reason to avoid iPods other than I prefer to be an individual.

Great player, highly reccomended!

Memory Stick Adaptor

My advice to anyone thinking perhaps they might be buying a straight Memory Stick Pro is be careful you do not get the card with the adaptor. Frankly, I agree with the other review, it simply does not work well. I also got"File Error" messages and the preview function did not work well on my Cybershot camera with the adaptor in. I was annoyed becuase I ordered the straight card WITHOUT an adaptor but got the adaptor, which as said, simply did not work. So be warned.

Cheap but sound quality only average

i bought these as a replacement for some other Sony phones that got damaged and have been using them on a variety of sources including my PC, DAB radio and a decent stereo.

The good points:
> They're cheap
> The lead is reasonably long
> They're light and comfortable

The bad points:
> The sound quality is not that good

The main problem with the sound quality is the muffled and thumping bass. yes, there is plenty of bass, but it's like listening through a cushion. It thumps, bumps but there is no real definition. The mid range is ok but vocals are somewhat distant and the top end is generally ok.

The MDR-250V phones are a much better bet.

Good unit with one irritating flaw in the firmware.

On the whole I am very pleased with this unit.

Good points:
Mostly does what it says on the tin. It has more features than I will ever use. The USB port on the front will even accept a keyboard for text entry when labelling titles and discs. This feature in NOT mentioned in the manual.

When not fast copying the HDD and DVD drives are quiet.

If you are copying stuff to keep, then you can record it to HDD, edit out the adverts and the start/finish announcements before burning it to DVD.

Bad points:
If you are using the remote control to enter text, the manual says that you can either select the letters on the screen or repeatedly press the number keys SMS style. It would be helpful to have the letters included in the legends on the remote control.

I have my sky + box connected upstream of the recorder to the Line 1 input so that if I want to copy stuff across it makes use of the RGB output from the Sky box. Unfortunately this means that you cant watch the Sky box whilst recording from the built in Freeview tuner. It would be good if the Line 1 input could be passed through even when recording Freeview. (I don't have an HDMI input on my telly). I have found a `plug around' around solution to this problem, but it involved me having to purchase a SCART distribution amplifier (£30) and use 2 SCART inputs on my telly.

If you want to record stuff using the AV inputs on the front then you can have any format as long as it is 4:3. A means of selecting 16:9 would be helpful.

The Manual is appalling. It is so bad that even Sony miss understood one section when talking to me an the phone - more of which later. I am fortunate to have relevant engineering experience and background to assist me with setting up and using the kit, but I don't know how the average non techie who just wants to `plug and use' would cope.

There appears to be a serous bug in the firmware. Fast dubbing between the HDD and DVD is fine. However, if the material on the HDD has been recorded at SP and you wish to copy more than 2 hours worth to a 4.7Gb DVD, then there is a problem with 16:9 material. 4:3 material copies across just fine but 16:9 material is copied across squashed into 4:3 format. To give Sony their due, they did respond to my message on their web site with a phone call to try and help. However the chap I spoke to told me that the it was due to `having to compress the material to make room on the disk'. I know for a fact that this is wrong particularly as I can work around the problem by loading the files from the DVD to my PC, modifying the WSS flags and then copying them back to DVD-r. I have tried further communication with Sony, but they seem reluctant to talk to me any more. I get the impression that they think I don't know what I am talking about. I am convinced that a modification to the firmware would sort the problem. You could argue that all I need to do is force my widescreen telly to display 16:9. However if you are replaying the discs on a 4:3 set then you don't have that option.

I find the menus a bit clunky to use however I can put up with that.

I see from the above that I have written more about the bad than the good. Will I be sending the unit back? No. Would I buy it again? If the Aspect ratio problem was sorted then defiantly yes. If not then I would certainly look elsewhere first.

Brilliant headphones.

EXCELLENT CANS. SPOT ON. CANT BELIEVE THE PRICE. WOULD HAVE PAYED 2 THE PRICE. ANYWAY STOP GABBLIN ON I'M AWAY OUT WITH THE DOG AND MY MUSIC. AS USUAL EXCELLENT SERVICE FROM AMAZON.TA VERY MUCH.

Excellent!

Superb TV, which really shows up how poor SD transmission is in the UK. HD (via Sky) is brilliant, as is input from BluRay - I didnt buy from Amazon in the end, but got a deal from Comet with Sony BluRay player

Very Reliable Quality Tapes

I have been using Mini DV tapes from a number of brands since I purchased my camcorder five years ago. I originally brought a 3CCD camcorder for the best quality around at the time so wanted a tape that can playback as well as the camcorder recorded it.

The one consistent tape I can safely say I have settled on for reliability and at a good price is this Sony tape. It is very good value when bundled together and the free head cleaner is a real bonus reminding us of a maintenance task we should all be doing to our camcorders but I bet most (me included) wouldn't go out and buy separately on a regular basis. Playback of recorded video is still crisp and sharp using the Sony tapes, even if my camcorder is looking a bit tired and I still see no reason to upgrade my camcorder yet.

Fabulous picture quality

First of all, can I say I disagree with the person below that suggests buying a tape-based camcorder is the way to go. More or less everyone agrees that tape as a format is on its way out, and I would definitely avoid it. And apart from anything else, tapes are not as flexibe (being sequential devices) nor reliable etc. A bad idea really that served their purpose in the 20th century, but things are progressing and they will be gone soon. Even the professional HD gear is moving away from tapes.

Now, on to my comments on the HDR-TG3: There's a lot to like about this camcorder. First and foremost, it produces really tremendous image quality. Yes, its small and neat and well built, but its the wow-factor of the video footage that impresses the most. Anyone used to camcorders based on vhs, or s-vhs, or Sony 8mm or Hi-8 or even DVD based, will find the video quality totally stunning... because it is. The amount of detail being resolved is just amazing and viewed on a full HD TV or a computer monitor at 1920x1200, the footage looks incredible.

Outdoors, colours are bright and vivid, free from noise and the focus is fast and accurate. Even indoors in low light, the footage is surprisingly good and although the noise levels are increased, its really pretty impressive. As someone else commented, the sound is just fabulous too, especially with no motor noise whining away in the background.

However, there are some issues or disappointments which if they were otherwise would have made this a better camcorder, imho. From the ergonomics point of view, I have no problem with the touch screen, nor with the zoom control, but I do find the on/off button to be in a daft place and I tend to end up opening the battery/memory stick door when trying to turn the thing off.

It would have been nice to see 720p recording supported and indeed 24p or 25p formats too, none of which are present. But I guess with 1080 lines, interlacing artefacts are less obtrusive so its not too much of a problem. (Certainly that's what Sky seem to have concluded too, given they have chosen to broadcast everything HD at 1080i even though they originally planned to use 720p for sport.)

I would also have liked video-inputs on the camcorder as well as outputs and an HDMI cable included would have been sensible, given that they provide every other cable you might conceivably need, but not the one you actually want! And a case would heve been more generous. I can't imagine anyone will want to travel with this camcorder without any sort of case.

Finally, the Sony software provided is fairly useless, but that's to be expected. It works OK, its just that it doesn't do much (anything?) useful.

But at the end of the day none of the above matters. People interested in buying this camcorder are surely after a small, compact device that produces great video quality. The HDR-TG3E delivers that in spades.

Headphones

Bought these in ear headphones on the strength of reveiws having used senheisser p100's and loved them. I was very dissapointed with the sony, bass is very lean , midrange harsh and treble ott. The best thing about them is comfort in the ear which is the only reason i'll keep them - sound quality in my opinion is poor. Not really worth more than £30

Good 1st LCD TV

Considering that before this I had a 21" Grundig TV I guess I wouldnt be the best person to give an idea of what is out there. I personally dont want to spend £1000 on a TV and My ideal TV would have been a 100 HZ Samsung which never went down in price. However saying that this 1080P TV is more than adequate for anyone out there. In the South east HD TV wont be here till 2012 so no one will really need 1080P. Its just a bigger screen to see TV.

I am very happy with this TV. The picture quality does not suffer from fast paced movement. The sound is good. The TV has good connectivity with 2 HDMI slots which is more that enough. Anyway dont waste your money getting something too good. Its not really worth it.

Sony NP-BG1 Battery for N/T/W Series Cybershot Camera

There is not a lot you can review about a battery really. Its exactly the same as the one that came with the digital camera I bought from Amazon. I wanted a second battery as a spare - the camera can only work with this type of battery and if you need to replace while out and about you do need that luxury of an extra battery.

The delivery time was great and the price was spot on. The battery works perfectly well and charges very fast - see the new charger info reviewed elsewhere - all in all a great item that will add security and piece of mind to my photo shooting around the planet.

Hope this helped a little bit - All the best - Colin.

Brilliant and at an excellent price

We had originally ordered a Samsung from Dixons for my son to use with his XBox because I couldnt get it on Amazon - which wasnt in stock although they took my cash and waited 10 days before telling me and giving me my refund. Still that meant we went looking again and found this little beauty. Amazon's service was awsome - ordered on 12 Jan in the evening and was in the house by 1pm on the 14 Jan - and that wasnt with the superfast delivery. The telly is wonderful - the picture is very clear and with fab colours even on the appalling interal arial we are using at the moment and the colours are so clear. My son is using on the games and is very impressed. The sound isnt tinny in any way at all - its so much better than our other TVs but I will say that these are all over 5 years old and I am not a HiFi freak - but its miles better than any other TV I have used. We are thinking of getting another this one is so good. As for getting it for a £5 like the review below - there is a very useful site called gimme4free which explains what these referral sites are all about. Put very simply, its a form of advertising where you have to get friends, family and others to sign up to an offer and get this as a reward when you have so many signed up. I havent tried it and I havent signed up but thought you might be interested.