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In this blog, EDN Editorial Director Maury Wright focuses on digital consumer-electronics gadgets and the converged networks that feed them with video, audio, and data. [Editor's note: As of Feb. 2008, this blog is no longer active and is presented here for archival purposes.]

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Super camera handles video, still images, and MP3 playback

Apr 19 2005 5:30PM | Permalink |Comments (47) |

Like many engineers, I’m no impulse shopper. I tend to research purchases to death, whether the item of interest is a $100 toaster oven or a $30,000 automobile. But at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) today I was blown away by a digital camera in a small booth in the back of the South hall. As I walked down the aisle, I was surprised to see a throng around this booth and wandered over to check it out. The attraction was the Supacam from a company called NsisUSA. This 100x70x30-mm camera captures 6-Megapixel still images, DVD-resolution video, and can play MP3 tunes. The content is stored on an SD Card. Presumably you can fit 4 hours of DVD-resolution content, in MPEG-4 format, on a 1-Gbyte card.

Now I may have thrown away the $288 plus $15 in shipping, but the dude in the booth said they only had 1100 to sell at the introductory price, and that 700 had already been sold in the first day and a half of the show. I didn’t even know that exhibitors were allowed to openly sell their wares on the NAB show floor. But I couldn’t resist this temptation. I’ll report on the device once I receive it – supposedly in ten days. I’m not sure that I can say I recommend it, because all I did was play with a unit for five minutes at the booth. But it surely looked impressive. The hawkster in the booth claims the cameras will go for $600 when they hit the broad market. I’ll have to wait and see if he’s more PT Barnum than serious technologist.

Related entries in: Convergence | Multimedia | Peripherals |

Reader Comments

at 4/26/2005 9:38:59 AM, bsobel said:
I am not an engineer but also attended NAB. My booth was located a few steps away from the NSIS USA booth and after hearing all the buzz I had to check it out myself. I must say, the specs are impressive and the camera seemed well made. One think I distinctly remembered the guy saying is that they were either OEM for Sony or Sony bought the company. Can anyone verify this? Please send email to bill@sobel.com

Thanks

at 4/26/2005 9:40:10 AM, bsobel said:
by the way, I did buy one...however I haven't told my wife yet :)

-Bill

at 4/27/2005 10:09:52 AM, Gruntle said:
The company name is Nisis USA not Nsis..
There are no 6.6 meg sensors so I'm thinking this is a 3.2 meg chip interpolated up to 6.6 megs...

at 5/3/2005 8:46:05 AM, tonyrod said:
I'm curious to see what the author ahs to say about his experience (if he has used his yet), since I was tempted to buy one, but less so since reading the last comment posted. Also, on their web page, they cite Maury's review, but misquote him at the end, saying "I recommend it, it's impressive", where the blog above says "I'm not sure I can recommend it..."!!

at 7/13/2005 7:58:54 PM, DTAYLOR said:
I bought one at Networld-Interop in May for the same price. I called them and got an RMA number to send it back a week after I received it. The images were not sharp. The viewfinder is completely useless in daylight. There is no optical zoom - it's all digital and the picture is very bad when zoomed in. A month after I sent the camera back the Post Office returned it to me because the company ignored delivery notices. Looks like I'm going to have to go through my credit card company to get my money back. If anyone tries to sell you one of these cameras run away as fast as you can, don't be duped like I was!

at 7/20/2005 9:25:15 PM, steve said:
Bought the camera at NAB. They made the cardinal sin of an imaging product; the image goes out of focus as soon as the digital zoom starts. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS PRODUCT. Form factor is terrific but actual product is junk!

at 11/29/2005 4:50:39 PM, Brett said:
Well, I actually bought one at the International Hotel/Motel and Restaurant Show in NYC in mid-Nov. The guy hawking the product claimed he was an optical engineer - wore a white lab coat. He said they produced all the internal optics for name brands like Sony and others but that their company had decided to go out on its own and do their own product. Having read what everyone else is saying - it seems like these guys are making false claims - I doubt they are an engineering company of any kind - more like a group that found a niche - tradeshows. Well, I guess it is working for them. BUT, luckily, I backed out of the deal after I got home, before I received the merchandise. After reading all the testimonials that are legit (i.e. not on their website)I feel like I just pocketed $400 - which was the cost for the camera and the needed 1G memory card.
My impression is extremely negative - reminds me of the street vendors in NYC - hey, you need a handbag ...

at 12/21/2005 8:57:01 AM, John said:
I received the Supacam DVX free (my wife won it as a door prize), so I can give a completely unbiased review after having played with this thing for a few hours.

Digital stills: While the camera takes 11MP stills, they are not 11MP quality. The larger size only shows all the flaws of the image (speckles, blurs, etc.) The pictures only look "good" at about 25% of the original size, so this is really only like a 2.5-3MP camera at best. Getting a picture that isn't blurry is impossible without a tripod or other means of keeping the camera still (slow shutter problem?). Lowlight pictures are very hard to get because the flash (mounted below the lens) only has an effective range of about 2-4 ft. Digital zoom just makes the images more blurry. The blur can be minimized, but it's very noticeable at the larger sizes. The pictures look ok at smaller sizes, so you could use this camera freehand (hold it steady) for use to get smaller images (take them at full res and resize them on your PC). As a digital still camera, it's about as good as a first gen camera phone.

Digital video Camera: The video recorded through the camera's lense is not DVD quality, and not as smooth as 30FPS. Lots of blurring during fast motion. Moderate artifacts during mild motion. Good enough for small sized videos that you want to post on a website or email to friends, but don't expect to capture fine details (Don't bother trying to record your child's school play). Lowlight conditions will see lots of grain and discoloration. No zooming while filming, but you can film at a fixed zoom, which is worthless since the video quality really suffers when the cam is zoomed.

Web Cam: No using this late at night with the lights out. You must be in a very will lit area or else it's useless. You'll be lucky if your face is recognizable without bright backlighting.

MP3 playback: All MP3s are renamed when played through the camera, so no artist or titles. You can play through your songs and stop playing, that's it. No frills playback here, not even a shuffle option.

Digital Video Recorder: This is probably the only thing that actually works somewhat well. Pump a composite video signal in (they only give you an mini-plug to RCA composite output cable, but just put couplers on each connector and it can be used as an input cable) and record what's playing on the LCD screen. This recording actually comes out pretty well, as long as the source material is good. While playing the video back on my PC, it looked almost as good as the original (a clip from my JVC DV cam), and the frame rate seemed to be ok. You could probably record a DVD, TV show, home movie, etc. to a 1GB card and have it watchable (as watchable as a movie can be on a 2.5" screen). I like the idea of easily converting VHS to MPEG4, although my PC can capture AVI and MPEG2 already, so I'll probably rarely use it. I haven't done any long recordings, so I don't know if it will start dropping frames at some point (maybe during fast motion). I can test that tonight, but at this point I'm guessing people have stopped reading and decided to avoid this camera.

Voice Recorder: This too worked pretty well, even when speaking in a soft voice with the recorder 2 ft. away. Holding the device close to the mouth results in very clear audio. Use this as a voice recorder and it's fine. Try to record a concert and you'll be disappointed.

Usefulness: I will basically use this as a portable LCD screen (for videogames, remote camera monitoring), a media player
(movies, downloaded video clips, pictures, music), video recorder (through the video input, not through the lens), and voice recorder.

Overall, even getting it free, it's kind of useless to me as a camera because I already own other devices that perform so much better. The price is certainly too high. I could see this as a nice camera phone type device (without the phone part of course) for $50 or, if they increase the screen quality and size, and put better MP3 playback software in, and added support for more audio and video formats, it could be a nice portable entertainment unit priced between $100 and $200. The ~$300 is absurd for the poor quality that you get. I'll use it because it was free, but for what I'm going to use it for, I wouldn't pay more than $50.

I hope this info helps.

at 12/27/2005 9:18:52 PM, Jeff said:
Thanks John, that was very helpful. I was somewhat interested in this camera, but not any more.

at 1/9/2006 4:48:23 PM, Ernest said:
Thank you John. I was going to buy it, but after reading your interesting review, i will not buy it.

at 1/16/2006 1:22:26 AM, mp3 said:
hi i hate this

at 1/23/2006 8:41:25 PM, Kevin said:
I got one at the builders show too. Now I'm reading all the reviews possible desperately trying to find a positive one so I can justify the perchase in my mind but I haven't found any. I should've known it sounded too good to be true. These guys are a bunch of crooked liars. The word violated comes to mind... :(
~~~Unhappy customer~~~

at 2/23/2006 6:08:12 PM, John_in_NC said:
I think the supercam is the same as the Digilife M1, which I purchased from yesasia.com. It came in from China. I used it to film at a dragstrip but did not have the lens in the correct setting so got blurred results. Did another test later and was ok quality but not as good as my old analog camcorder.

Photos were not that bad, they are interlaced to get the higher resolution, quality is that of maybe a 3-4 mp camera.

One thing interesting though, I connected the AV inputs to my cable box and recorded a tv show. Played it back and the quality was very good on both the preview screen as well as on my laptop. Did not get full screen on my laptop.
So they did a good job on this unit but for some reason it does not grab video as well from it's lens.

It is okay under outdoor lighting, will have to play around with it more to get better understanding of what it can and cannot do.

at 2/26/2006 3:40:17 PM, JP said:
Went to the Travel Show in New York City, bought two cameras, I am returning the two of them. I did not buy the scard, figure it try it with internal memory first. Not satisfied at thank God I bought it with AMEX card after. Will stop payment immediately. After I got home I realized that the sales guy had an AMEX ID tag and while I questioned him about that he stated, that AMEX was on of the sponsors of the show. But in reality the sponsor of the Travel SHow wa the NEw York TImes. Also he did not have any travel information in his booth, he did not have any bags to package the camera he borrowe them from the Virginia Travel Booth. I should have know better I am usually a very demanding consumer, but I guess I was impresses by 11MpixelI asked him who put out the camera and he told me Panasonic, not true, the Camera is from Australia build in China. Also the instructions book only has 11 pages in English. The guarantee card do not have an address or telephone number, nor can you register the camera on the net, I could not find a serial number. I am calling the New York Times to find out how come if this company did not have anything related to travel they were selling electronics in the travel show. very strange!!!Someone got them in and they were all the way to the back to room, and with an American Express ID Card. Very suspecious. I am calling American Express too. stay tune for further information.

at 5/5/2006 12:38:10 PM, Scott said:
Spend a little more and get a Sanyo Xacti VPC-C6. It's an actual 6MP still camera and shoots 640x480 30fps mpeg4 video. It's amazingly small and performs great. A dedicated still camera will typically provide better still images, and a dedicated miniDV camcorder will provide better video, but you can't beat the Sanyo for the combination of portability and quality. Don't waste your money on some off brand crap that resorts to lies and exaggerations to sell its product.

I've had my Sanyo for 3 weeks now and my wife and I love it. I carry it in my pocket almost everywhere. My friends are amazed that it is as small as their old Nokia phones they still carry.

at 5/9/2006 6:32:04 AM, mathprof said:
Has anyone been able to get a refund? Did anyone have to call American Express for a chargeback?

mathprof@hotmail.com

at 5/9/2006 3:03:52 PM, Steve From Charlotte said:
I was this camera at the Real Estate Expo in Atlanta and purchased it after hearing all the buzz. The person (same Dr. in a white lab coat) was very good and charming. It will never replace my camera, but the video is not bad.

at 5/17/2006 11:07:38 PM, Get real said:
I bought one and it rocks, beats the pants off my panasonic D-snap crap thing..
I think you people just like to bitch, you crack me up.. like a buch of old woman.. hehheheh

at 5/22/2006 5:02:20 PM, Still at it. said:
These were being sold at a medical meeting last week. $328. All sorts of hype; but with the main sales guy wearing a mike he seemed more like a fair hawker, so chose not to buy. Glad I didn't.

at 7/3/2006 8:59:39 PM, dvateacher said:
I am at the NEA teacher's conference in Orlando. I met the (so called) Dr. Mark Leonard and his Motley Crew and I purchased 2 Supacams. I thought it was a good buy. I think teachers at this conference were bilked out of thousands of dollars. Was anyone successful at receiving a refund? I have their address in Santa monica. I plan to make a visit.

at 7/9/2006 2:31:28 PM, m.miller said:
I am a very cautious shopper who buys nothing on the spur of the moment. But at a recent Computer in education conference (NECC) in San Diego, CA I was so impressed by the claims and presentation for the camera, I almost broke my rule and bought it.

I didn't, though - chickened out at the last minute, thinking "this is too good to be true. What is the catch?"

Thanks to all of you for confirming my instincts!

at 8/3/2006 5:49:14 PM, Arnold5012 said:
I bought one at Siggraph this year. Yeah...it is not entirely as good as it was hyped up to be (or appeared to be on the showroom floor). The still camera feature is indeed crap, but the rest of the features are okay. I probably over-paid, but I am not entirely displeased with the purchase. Had I paid $700 instead of $328 for this camera you would not be reading this right now as I would have hung myself already ;)

at 10/19/2006 7:13:24 PM, Morningstar said:
Saw the camera at ISA show this week. I was seriously thinking but instead I decided that I would rather pay more to order it through their web site than buying it at the conference, as the lady was telling me. Instead I am pouring over the internet looking for reviews for this product now. I am glad that I did not buy the camera after all. Thanks for all of your comments.

at 10/20/2006 3:32:18 PM, LDI Floorwalker said:
They are also selling these for $328 at the LDI convention in Las Vegas 10/20-22/06. The now say the units are 12 megapixels. They hemmed and hawed when I started to push them about zoom capabilities. I may try to push them for more info if I have time over the next couple of days. If so, I'll try to post the info here.

at 10/31/2006 6:10:38 PM, Supacam dvi said:
Saw the new version of the Supacam at the Vegas Apex show and took the plunge. Must say that the camera is astonishing. The video quality far rivals my trusty Sony Handycam. The still photos turned out beautifully and the video iPod (is that okay to say or will Apple be unhappy) function is spectacular. This is a pretty decent slice of heaven.

at 1/10/2007 1:06:43 AM, anonper said:
See also htp://garrettharding.blogspot.com/2005/08/supacam-buyer-beware.html

at 3/9/2007 12:37:13 PM, Isatstl said:
The Supacam DVi is a highly inferior product. I got one several days ago. And i have had nothing but trouble since. The unit itself looks nice, but when 1 hr after the charge is complete and the thing just doesn't want to stay on, Now it's 2 days after the fact and it won't charge or even turn on, BEWARE THIS PRODUCT, it's a piece of garbage. Spend your money on something from an actual brand name, not anything from this company.
Picture quality is horrible, worse then a 4 MP, when it says that it is 12 MP, from the few pictures i actually managed to take.

at 3/9/2007 10:06:57 PM, Brian said:
Just picked up one of these at the EhX show. It looked interesting and I had high hopes...

The guy Claims they sell around 200 units per show at $300 a head.... That's 60 Grand per show folks... from all of us suckers.

I am getting an RMA because the optics are crap and the light handling is horrible.

Brian

at 3/22/2007 7:26:26 PM, almost purchased, but delayed said:
Didi one of the salesmen have an english accent?

at 3/30/2007 12:51:40 PM, Virgil said:
Just saw this product at a show in New Orleans. I was working at a booth nearby and saw several people return their cameras on the second day of the show. Also, I heard them telling conflicting information to different customers...it was easy to hear with the obnoxious salesman on a microphone!

at 4/8/2007 10:48:59 AM, Carl B in DC said:
I picked up this SUPERCAM DVi with supposed 12 MP quality images. Not at all as advertised. All of john's comments below are true: blurring without a tri-pod, useless viewfinder in daylight; extremely small controls impossible to use w/o the remote; poor image quality (3 megs at best), Stay away from the product!

at 5/2/2007 4:47:20 PM, tentative said:
I saw a camera that looks identical to the SupaCam DVI on sale at Walmart (next to the SD cards) for $165. Is it really the same thing? (The case looks _identical_.)

at 5/18/2007 4:45:08 PM, Dodged a bad deal said:
Just got back from the GTC West conference here in Sacramento and these scum bag salesmen are still at it. Their latest lie was that the company sells it for $700. I found their website and they wanted the same $299 as they were asking for at the show. At first glance it looks chock full of value, but as “tentative” said above, this same type of feature filled device sells for half of that at WalMart. BTW, I bet “Supacam dvi” above is one of the rip-off artist salesmen “a pretty decent slice of heaven” my a**.

at 5/19/2007 12:24:50 PM, Chris said:
Saw this camera at an Interop show in Vegas this past week. Asked to see the user manual. It states a number of resolutions for still photos, up to 5 MP, with 7 MP & 12 MP digitally interpolated (apparently not very well from above comments). Video zoom is digital. Seemed ok on small view screen in bright room, but this is the worst way to evaluate it, and optical zooms outperform digital anyway. Also concerned with whether my fat fingers could control the tiny buttons. Huge crowd all frenzied up, buying quickly. I didn''t, pending a web search for reviews which I''m glad I made.

at 7/15/2007 9:43:18 AM, Jane said:
the Supacam is the hardest camera to operate I've ever seen. I do what the book says, and it doesn't do it.
Pain in the butt!!! Bad
investment!

at 8/9/2007 7:45:04 AM, Scam Artist's Name and Phone Number said:
To those who got ripped off: Here is the contact info for the guy that ripped you off.
He is a con artist. He flees from one state to the next. He hides by giving you fake contact info when you buy his products; then he leaves the convention never to be heard from again. He is a scam artist. [THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN EDITED, please see comment below.]

at 8/10/2007 1:13:32 PM, Matthew Miller, Editor-in-Chief, EDN.com said:
On the advice of counsel, we have removed the remainder of the comment immediately above this one, including the personal contact information it provided. Users may rest assured that we do not edit or censor their comments except in the most exceptional of cases, such as this one. Please feel free to contact me at mdmiller@reedbusiness.com with questions or comments.

at 8/28/2007 10:21:24 PM, Jos said:
Saw the product on the Magic Show in Vegas today. I was (as many of you) amazed by the specs but also hesitated because of the weird sales guy in the lab coat (do they really think I´m so stupid to think that he is the lab guy that has to convince us that it is a great product?)I decided to back off and first check the reviews on the net. I´m glad I did because it is obvious that this is not a good product and a waste of money.

at 9/18/2007 7:27:00 AM, jonas said:
i need to do a film from runescape

at 9/23/2007 2:55:29 PM, I woz totally suckered-2 said:
Bought one at the ICAAC medical meeting in Chicago last week. Big, big mistake! Forget all the rubbish about 12 MP photos - the pictures that I took on my 2 MP mobile phone that week are much sharper than the ''12 MP'' pics taken on this camera. Terrible optics, I suspect. The digital zoom only seemed to work intermittently - which was probably just as well the video from when I did finally get it to work was of frankly appalling quality. The Sears tower looks like it has grown a coating of fuzzy fur and is in need of a shave! Much less sharp than the analog camcorder that I got rid of 6 years ago, never mind my current DV recorder. And that is all before you start trying to used the out-of-date bundled software that they provide to edit the video (quite impossible). Do not buy - run like hell if you see a con-artist in a white coat trying ot flog you one of these crappy overpriced things!

at 10/6/2007 2:31:14 AM, AJT said:
If the people behind this are really con men (which well they might be), why doesn''t some disgruntled customer (I''m not one of them I''m afraid, I quite like the one I bought from them 2 years ago, even with its faults), record what is being preached, bring a court bailiff or notary, have the representations recorded and then have the guy arrested on the spot for misrepresentation - there are surely some states where the local commercial law still provides for that kind of consumer protection. Seeing as they operate in several states, they might even fall under federal trade jurisdiction.

Alex

at 10/8/2007 2:26:07 PM, Sid said:
I picked one up at the Fire and Rescue International Trade Show in Atlanta Georgia back in Aug 07. Same guy in a white lab coat was doing his thing. Smooth talked most of us into buying this Supacam. Like most of you, I too wish I had Google this product before buying it. In any case, I went after them to get my money back. After getting a "RMA" return merchandise authorization number, I returned the "junk cam" and before the 30 day return period was up I got most of my money back. They kept 15% for restocking. I'm not done with them yet, because at no time did anyone ever say anything about a "restocking" fee BUT Mr. White Lab Coat did say I would get a "Full Refund". All I can say is spread the news on this cam to everyone. This is a scam product.

at 10/8/2007 2:34:49 PM, Tom C. said:
I got ripped off just like so many of you. I'm thinking of sending an email to 20/20 so they can do a show of this guy and how he's scaming people. How can organizations let someone like this into trade shows and get away with this? This guy in a white lab coat was a smooth talker. This is nothing but a scam product. Do not buy this crappy supascam cam!

at 10/27/2007 5:54:38 PM, Ellen said:
Purchased in Jan. 07 this camera never performed properly and took terrible quality pictures. I returned it to the Santa Monica address and they sent me a new unit. I just want to dump this for a decent camera. I feel ripped off. Let the buyer beware.

at 6/1/2008 4:52:32 AM, marlin said:
How can I get the CD_ROM for the supercam?

at 6/13/2008 11:25:59 AM, Mike K said:
I bought the Supercam at a Toy show paid 220 for it. It is worth $200 for functions it does and how small it is. Picture quality is worth deducts $50.00 from price. So worth maximum of $150 Do not expect $700 quality as the person at the booth (mall rat sales person) says. Good to take to put in your pocket. Pictures suck video is better.

My bottom line if you get it for $100 okay

at 12/10/2008 11:07:16 AM, rippedoff said:
This is the worst Camera that I would recommend to anyone. I bought it at FOSE in DC and after a year no good now. Anyone knows how to contact these lordsholes

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