Sony HDR-SR1 AVCHD 2.1 MP 30GB High-Definition Hard Disk Drive Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom

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Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000GXBBL8
• Item model number: HDR-SR1
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,969 in Camera & Photo (See Bestsellers in Camera & Photo)

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  Camera & Photo > Camcorders > Hard Disk Drive

• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 18, 2006

Product Description

Manufacturer Description

Manufacturer Description It’s the industry’s first AVCHD camcorder that records high-definition to a hard disk drive. Record in high-definition and standard definition. 2.1 ClearVid CMOS Sensor requires less power than traditional CCD imagers, supplying longer battery performance.

Sony HDR-SR1 Highlights

2.1-megapixel (gross) ClearVid CMOS sensor 1/3-inch ClearVID CMOS Sensor with 1990K (effective) pixels provides stunning detail and clarity with exceptional video (up to 1080 lines of horizontal resolution for HD; 530 lines of horizontal resolution for SD) and still image performance. The Megapixel technology enhances your digital videos and digital still (3980K) photography performance.

10x optical/80x digital zoom The optical zoom helps to bring the action close up from far away. In addition, the Digital Zoom interpolation means that extreme digital zooming is clearer, with less distortion than previous types of digital zooms.

Professional-quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens Carl Zeiss lenses have an advanced optical multi-layer coating for increased contrast. This results in vivid image brilliance, true-to-life color saturation and perfect renditions of subtle tones. The additional T coating on the lens further reduces unwanted glare and flare.

3.5-inch wide (16:9) touch-panel Hybrid Clear Photo LCD Plus Display (211K pixels) The 3.5-inch wide (16:9) LCD screen provides excellent viewing clarity with improved resolution. The high resolution 211K pixel LCD screen rotates up to 270 degrees for multiple viewing angles providing sharp, detailed images for monitoring or playback, and the widescreen format makes shooting in 16:9 mode and composing shots even easier.

Smooth slow recording By increasing the record rate from 60 fields per second (fps) to 240 fps for 3 seconds allowing you to capture 3 seconds of fast motion and play the video back in 12 seconds. This is great for analyzing a golf swing or a viewing a bird in flight.

Enjoy 5.1-channel surround sound through the built-in microphone

Dolby Digital 5.1-channel recording The HDR-SR1 will record in Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround sound with a built-in microphone. By recording in 5.1-channel surround sound, you can now experience your home movies with active sounds coming from all directions. Enjoy your personal home movies the way you experienced them while recording.

Digital Still Memory Mode with Memory Stick Duo media Capture still images up to 2304x1728 (4:3) resolution, directly onto Memory Stick Duo Media for easy transfer to PCs for emailing, printing or sharing with other compatible Memory Stick devices.

Super SteadyShot picture stabilization system An advanced version of Sony's SteadyShot system that controls an even higher range of shake and vibration frequencies, to achieve an even higher level of smoothness without degradation of video like some other image stabilization systems.

On-screen zoom and record buttons For additional control of the camcorder, the HDR-SR1 features Zoom and Record buttons on the frame of the LCD screen. This allows the user more flexibility when holding the camcorder, especially in overhead or low angle shots.

Transfer images quickly and easily through the USB 2.0 interface

USB 2.0 interface The USB 2.0 interface provides an easy way to connect your hard disk drive Handycam camcorder to the computer for fast transfer of video and still images to your computer for editing. The camcorder can also be used as an external storage and/or playback device.

One-touch wide-angle shooting Easily switch between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for shooting, with just the touch of a button.

Progressive shutter system A mechanical shutter system that provides progressive scan performance while utilizing an interlaced scanning system. Digital still images will be sharp and clear with excellent definition.

Active interface shoe Provides a location directly on the camcorder to which one may add optional accessories while providing power and twoway communication with those accessories.

Super NightShot Infrared System With Sony's NightShot Infrared System you can capture natural looking video, even when shooting in low light. Record subjects up to 20 feet away using the built-in infrared system.

Dual record While recording video in high-definition (HD), you have the ability to capture a 2.3-megapixel (16:9) still image directly to Memory Stick Duo Media. While recording in standard definition you have the ability to capture a 1.7-megapixel (4:3) still image directly to Memory Stick Duo media.

Easy PC backup Easily back up your footage (HD or SD) to your PC using the supplied software. The footage will be stored on your PCs hard drive for archiving purposes and viewing at a later time; the footage is stored by date for easy playback. In addition, only new footage is tranferred to your PC each time you backup your footage.

Additional Features

• One-touch DVD burn
• Manual focus
• Program AE (Auto Exposure) modes
• Picture effects
• Fader effects
• InfoLithium battery with AccuPower
• Meter system
• Battery information
• Easy Handycam button
• Multi-language menu
• Tele Macro function

What's in the Box

Power adapter/in-camera charger (AC-L15), InfoLithium rechargeable battery (NP-FM50) Remote Commander remote control (RMT-835), component video cable, A/V cable (stereo), application CD-ROM with driver, USB cable

Note: Additional software may be required for use with Apple computers.

Product Description

For the first time, record high-definition video directly to a hard disk drive with the HDR-SR1. Now you can capture all your memories anyway you want. Boasting a generous 3.5" Wide (16: 9) Hybrid Touch Panel Clear Photo LCD screen and multiple connectivity options, you'll have complete control from capture to cut. For the first time ever, you can record high-definition video directly to a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with the HDR-SR1 Handycam camcorder. In addition, the dual HD/SD format allows you to record in standard definition as well. You will also be able to freeze time in flawless detail with a 4.0 Megapixel still capture feature to the HDD or Memory Stick Duo Media.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A excellent little camcorder, October 11, 2006

By	R. Melen (Silicon Valley) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I received the camcorder a couple of days ago to replace my older Sony miniDV camcorder that is nine years old (still works well). I bought the new one after buying a Samsung 46" LCD flat screen and seening what I have been missing in HD television and it made the my existing camcorder look mediocre. I needed an HD camcorder to go with the HD display.

I have seen other photographers using hard drive camcorders with USB ports and decided then that I would go that for next purchase of a camcorder. I saw two advantages over the miniDV tape of the hard drive: (1)the ability to transfer the images onto a computer quickly (it is more than twice as fast as transferring a miniDV tape using firewire) and (2) the HD had 4 hours or more of operation without changing tapes. I film my son's sporting events that run two hours and changing tapes is always ackward.

I have used on trial basis a camcorder that had the small DVD burner built inside and it worked fine but the need for for having the camcorder operate on the charger for 15 minutes or more to "finalize" the disk was very annoying. I also worry about the miniDVD disks skipping during filming while using miniDVD camcorders in high shake environments such as in the back of speedboat. The just seem intuitively more vibration prone, but I could be worried about nothing. Thus I chose the hard drive version over the miniDV tape and the miniDVD disk similiar camcorder that Sony sells.

Thus far the device has worked well and looks great on the HD large screen TV. I film my son's first football game in HD tommorrow. I had to go back to the store to buy the bigger QM71 battery. The battery the come with camcorder claims to work 90 minutes, but this goes by quickly. The QM71 battery lasts for more three hours. I amd considering also buying the QM91 battery but it very thick and takes up lots of space behind the camera. I like to have two batteries, one to charge and one to use. I also bought a travel charger for the camcorder that makes it possble to charge the battery at home while using the camcorder untethered with a second battery.

I read reports about some people no liking the touch screen and finding it confusing. This is a complicated and it is at time confusing but I like the touch screen.

The worst part of the camcorder is not the camera at all, the software is not up to the rest of the amazing capabilities of the rest of the gear. I use the camera with Windows XP and so I used the free sony software the came with the camera. THe camera puts out .m2ts files. I would guess that none of your current software recognizes this. Mine certainly did not and I have lots of different current software. Apparently .m2ts is the file extentions for the new AVC/H.264 the Sony and Panasonic (of VHS tape fame) are jointly trying to establish. I bought this camera because I this this new disk format with dominated the prosumer video space and many companies will sell slick software for it.

One surprise (it should not have been but I did think about it) was that the HD video images require much more computing horsepower to display than the prior generations of video. A 3 GHz Pentium 4 is the bare minimum to allow a PC to show the video images without jerkyness (Also the new Pentium DUOs work was well). If your current computer is a little old you can use the camcorer to play the videos on your flatscreen but this is not a long term solution. Is possible to fairly easily move videos back forth between the camcorder and your old computer using the USB port. The transfer speed is around 500 MB per minute so the entire 30GB may take an hour. I may a little optimistic on this transfer rate but it not way off. I have just done a few transfers thus far and never have I transfer the whole drive. The longest transfer was 20 minutes and this around 1/3 of a drive. This is much, much fast than the 120MB per minute that I have been getting using my miniDV tape drive on my old Sony camcorder. The radical increase in transfer speed is what I was looking for. While the now think of this as being awesome fast, it will not take more than a few weeks before I think that even this speed is painfully slow. That is why technology is, never enough.

The camera controls, zoom, etc are fairly conventional. Although the detail in the images is awesome since they are HD. I use the 10X optical zoom with a 2X digital zoom mode selected which give me plenty of zoom range. There is a 10X digital zoom range mode but the images are very pixelated at the extreme end of the zoom.

The camera is surprisingly small and compact, moreso than my old camcorder.

The sound is awesome (Dolby 5 channel surround sound). I never new how important sound was until four years ago when I got the surround sound for my DVD player. Have surround for football games and basketball game filming will put the crowd behind me and the field noises in front of me. I will learn more how works out in the future, but inital test show it is working as it seems it should.

The real test will come after using the camera couple of months and seeing all the difference in the new film results. I sure the camera will out well. I many have to buy a new computer or a new video card to using my computer as a player, but I still have some software changes to try.

I can burn traditonal DVDs or a new kind of HD DVDs (called AVCHDs). If I get a bluray burner I can make Bluray HD DVDs. Many options for playback. I store all of our currently family videos on a 750GB hard disk for which I have a USB 750GB drive for backup. I like this method of storing the video collection. Many Blurays or othe DVDs is not my first choice. I have seen dedicated HD video players that can operate through the ethernet. This another avenue to explore. Meanwhile I will use the camera as a video player and see if buy a new video card for my computer fixes my jerkiness with my 2.5 GHZ Pentium computer.

The best thing about the camera is the awesome look of the videos on the large flatscreen LCD display and the worst thing is the annoying software that comes for free with the camera (although it does 75% of what you want).

128 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Camcorder, Can be used with a Mac, October 16, 2006

By	Liberty Dollar (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This camcorder uses a new file format (AVCHD) which is based on current popular standards. AVCHD is simply a streaming version of H.264 video with Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio. When producing an HDD camcorder, Sony had to decide between using the current standard and making a new one. Since the current standard is MPEG-2 video and stereo audio (eg: HDV) at a constant bitrate of 25mbps, the AVCHD format provides a number of features: 1) Better audio, with 5.1 channels recorded by the camcorder. 2) Better video as AVC is H.264-- a modern codec that privides much higher quality data for a given bitrate than the ancient MPEG-2 video that HDV is based on. 3) Much more flexibility-- to be HDV compatible would have meant recording constantly at 25mbps, and this is too fast for the CDR version (the HDR-UX1) and is unnecessary. 15Mbps H.264 should provide better quality video than MPEG-2 at 25Mbps!

The downside of moving into the future in this way is that current editing software does not yet support the new format. Thus, either you use Sony's supplied software on windows, or you wait until your software company produces an update that supports the format.

AVCHD is the next generation in consumer video and I expect it will be widely supported. I am betting good money (eg: I bought an SR1) that Apple will release updates to Final Cut and iMovie this January that support AVCHD.

However, if you are happy shooting in SD for now, you can get a workflow that works on the mac. The SR1 shoots SD in MPEG-2 format, and while iMovie doesn't yet support Dolby 5.1 sound, it can be easily converted.

All that's necessary to work with an edit SR1 video (in SD mode only) on a Mac right now is the Apple $20 MPEG-2 decoder add on to quicktime (from the Apple site, but included with Final Cut and DVD Studio Pro) and a conversion application to make use of it. I found StreamClip to be a great (Free) solution from Squared 5... their website is at www squared5 dot com. [...]

Additionally the picture taking mode saves data to the hard drive, so this camera really is the one solution for all my imaging needs. 30G will store a lot of pictures!

If you want to work with HD right now, you need to go with the Sony Windows software, or go buy an HDV camcorder. But if you're willing to use it in SD mode now, you can get a workflow going on the Mac with the SR1. And I really expect full HD support for this camcorder will be in the next revision of the software.

Don't bash a product because it uses a new spec that the software doesn't yet support! The products have only been on the market a week or two. Apple and Adobe and everyone else will surely support these cameras.

And when they do, these will be the solution that can't be beat!

I bought an M71 battery and spent 4 hours driving around shooting video-- at the end of it, only had 5GB of video and still had batterylife left... this camera is nice to the batteries, and the hard drive is so big that in SD mode, you can get 27 hours of footage at the highest bitrate! Its nice to not be limited by having to swap tapes.

Great Camera all around, fully featured and image quality is great, though if you do a lot of night shooting you probably want a three-chip camera.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Quality, easy to use, future proof, December 19, 2006

By	David O. Giacomini "Entrepreneur" (Fort Collins, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have gone through several camcorders in the past 5 years and recently began my search for a hi-def camcorder. One of my frustrations with DV tapes is that for me, they tended to sit on the shelf and gather dust. They took tons of storage space to encode (way more than AVCHD). Editing to DVD also seemed to be more complex than necessary and time consuming. As a result, I have many tapes that I just don't bother to burn to DVD. It was just easier to plug in the camcorder and watch the video from there.

So through my research, I discovered disk based camcorders. Most of the reviews criticized the image quality. This second generation seems to have improved quite a bit. With the compression and ease of transfer to a PC (literally plug in and push one button) I was sold on the Hard Drive format. I'm not a big fan of mini-DVD formats either because of the unique DVD's used and some compatibility issues.

I was pretty much set on a 3CCD JVC Everio GZ-MG505. This is a standard definition camcorder but with 3CCD's and pretty highly regarded. I had a hard time deciding between 3CCD vs high def (AVCHD) +$300

After reading more and more reviews, I realized that even with 3CCD's, the image quality just can not compare to high def. Even high def converted to standard def is better. So I went with the Sony.

The Sony is so easy to use that I was out shooting immediately after charging the battery. I haven't even cracked open the instruction manual yet. That says a lot for how intuitive the camcorder is. When I ordered from Amazon, they expected it to arrive after Christmas. I contacted Amazon and they stated they were scrambling trying to get them before Christmas. Sure enough, Amazon delivered and I have already filmed my daughters Holiday Recital and her meeting with Santa. (The SR1 is great in low light by the way).

My thoughts on AVCHD is that it will be supported soon enough. We have a high def projector but most of our TV's are still standard. Also, we do not own a high def DVD player or BlueRay. We will probably get a PS3 next year. I bet AVCHD software will arrive well before we actually get a high def DVD player so I'm not too concerned about the delay. The SD video in the meantime has been superb and easy to share with friends and family. If I really need to show off the high def, I just plug in the camcorder.

I have no complaints and as a result gave this camcorder a 5 star rating. But I do have a few minor tweaks that would have been nice.
- Battery life could be a bit better. Included battery is about 70 minutes. 2 hours would have been ideal but an additional high capacity better solved that problem but added to the weight.
- Camcorder is a tad bigger than comparable hard drive based camcorders (those JVC ones are tiny). I actually like the feel in my hand though and it is not too big.
- Included software could be a little bit better especially since there is no real support for AVCHD yet. It is very easy to use though. You can edit start and stop points of clips but you can't rearrange the order or include any transitions and the title screens are very limited (about 5 or 6). But again, works well and easy to understand.
- Photos during filming limited to 3. My last JVC, I could shoot unlimited still photos during filming. Not that big of a deal though as this is probably rarely used. Just stop and start filming again to shoot 3 more photos.
- Hard Drive is somewhat limited at 30GB. For such an expensive camcorder and inexpensive hard drives, I'm surprised the Sony did not come with an 80gb drive which is pretty common and even low end today. I haven't explored this but I doubt Sony made it easy to upgrade the hard drive myself. Of course when you have a high def camcorder, most people will want to record at the highest quality settings as they can always reduce the output for their intended viewing device so having a high resolution source is ideal. Unfortuanatly, at the highest quality setting AVCHD 15MB XP you get about 4 hours of recording time. I personally don't think this is quite enough time for a standard week or two vacation. I usually travel with my laptop and can download the video so this is not a concern for me but with an 80GB drive, one could get 10 hours which seems adequate for the typical vacation.

I didn't deduct for these shortcomings because even without these, the camera is unique in its category and is an amazing camera. I didn't feel like I should penalize the camcorder for my "wish list."

Overall, after months of reviewing camcorders, I am very happy with my purchase and would make the same purchase again.