Low-price digital video recording: just picture it

Technofile: These days, the possibilities for digital video and images are endless. You can take pictures with your mobile phone, and even take small videos with the average digital camera. And of course, digital video cameras exist at the high end. But what if you want something literally cheaper, and more cheerful, to create video fast?

Digital video camcorders can cost the best part of a grand to buy, and while you get quality, what you don't often get is speed of distribution. What is needed is a cheaper option that records directly to digital and creates files that can be posted online or emailed fast.

Step forward an unlikely beast, in the shape of the PocketDV4 3300 Camcorder.

Costing around €142, the PocketDV4 is perhaps the cheapest way of creating digital video on the market today.

But you will have to prepare to be underwhelmed - the cheapness comes through in everything, including the plasticky nature of the device.

Leaving that aside, the PocketDV4 is perfect for the budding director of Blair Witch Project (Reloaded).

Its main function is to shoot VGA-resolution video (640x480 pixels) at eight to 12 frames per second.

Now, while that's not big- screen standard, it's perfectly viewable on a PC screen or website, and perfect for the mobile business person who needs to grab video with sound and send it back to the office or keep a file of digital videos.

It boasts a two-megapixel CMOS sensor - in plain English, that means the quality is not up to the standards of better digital cameras, but with software tweaking it will produce images of up to three-megapixel resolution.

The PocketDV4's strength is not its quality - which is passable - but its simplicity. Incredibly, it runs on four plain old AA batteries (so no having to recharge anything), and it saves its video to a standard Secure Digital card.

These cards are big - they go up to between 256MB and 1GB - which means you can cram a lot of video onto them: up to 30 minutes, with sound.

And although the camera comes with a CD containing software to download the video, I simply threw the card into an SD card reader, plugged it into the laptop and - hey presto! - I had video.

But the PocketDV4 has a few other tricks up its sleeve.

It has a built-in flash and a 4x digital zoom. And the maker, Aiptek, got quite carried away and included voice recorder and MP3 player functionality. All this inside a package the size of a normal quick-snap camera. It comes with cables to connect to the PC and the TV.

But the two things I still wouldn't bother doing with the PocketDV4 are take still digital pictures I plan to keep, and use it as an MP3 player.

These days, you can pack all the digital features all of the time into one small digital package, but you can't fool all the other digital devices all of the time.

PocketDV4: available for €142.50 from www.firebox.com