On Thu, 24 Aug 2000 19:41:10 GMT, Greg M777 wrote:

>I'm in the market for a new camcorder and have been considering the
>Sony TRV20 Mini DV camcorder. I was in a local electronics store the
>other night and they had one hooked up so you could see the output
>through a video monitor. I did some quick pans around the store with
>it checking the picture quality, quickness of focus and the zoom as
>they appeared on both the camera's LCD screen and the video monitor
>they had it hooked to. I was pretty impressed with what I saw until I
>did the same thing with a Sony TRV520 Digital 8 camcorder they had
>hooked up in the same manner. The thing I immediately noticed was that
>the picture from the digital 8 camera was much better in terms of
>brightness and clarity than their TRV20. Another thing I noticed was
>that their 520 was much quicker to focus on a target then the TRV20.
>Also, when doing a moderate pan the TRV20's image seemed to have a
>jittery nature to it while the TRV520's was smooth. I checked both to
>make sure there were no effects on and that both just had autofocus on.

It sounds like the camera set-ups were actually different.
The TRV-20 may have been in slow-shutter or progressive-scan
mode. With Mini-DV (and variants), as Keith Wiebe says later,
what you see on a direct connection to a monitor
is what you will have on tape (using the same monitor for
tape playback), unlike with analogue gear. Other variations:
some viewing screens have "delay" and do not look smooth
with motion; AF speed is not necessarily better if it is
faster (the VX-2000 AF response is quite slow, to minimize
"hunting" and mis-focus when things move quickly across the
field of view, for instance); brighter images often look
less sharp on TVs due to "blooming"; "sharper"-looking
images are often too high in contrast and/or have too much
sharpening "edge-effect" for a pleasant-looking picture
("hype" substitutes for "substance", a common malady in
life...;-). I'm not familiar with either camcorder (you
can find reviews of other one-chippers, and most of the
good 3-chippers on my web page, though, under the
"I babble" index...).