On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:39:14 -0400, "Vaughn" wrote:

[....]
>Other than the USB, the TRV17 is the TRV20 with
>slightly lower quality and almost the same price.
[....]

Ummm..., well, not quite entirely.....;-)
I just bought a TRV11 (same imaging as TRV17
and PC5/9) and a PC100 (same imaging as a PC110
and TRV20). Sony appears to be splitting its
camcorder line into three parts: 3-chip, one
chip megapixel, and one chip conventional. In
the one chippers, the megapixel versions get
you a slightly sharper-looking video picture,
with slightly higher color saturation (and
better stills - and VFs with higher pixel
counts - but in practice, this last didn't
appear to be as important as one might
think...), but at the expense of shortened
low-light range, higher contrast, and more
evident oversharpening edge effects (Sony
tries hard to make the megapixel picture
look "splashier" than the non-megapixel
picture). I found the image quality of the
TRV-11 (though inferior in every way to
the TRV900 picture...) more similar to the
TRV900 than the picture of the PC100 was...
But with all of this, if one does not need
the smaller size of the one-chippers, the
prices of these newer ones make the TRV900
look like a bargain, with its
recently-reduced price (and better picture).