1 post tagged “gz-mg21u”

Well, I bought something off my wish list....the JVC GZ-MG21U.  First off, the reasons I bought it:

1. I sold my digital camera Sony Cybershot 7.2 MP to my sister and needed another still frame camera
2. The price was right - for right now
3. We needed a camcorder for the upcoming baby
   

I bought it at Best Buy, and I didn't even have to fight with the staff about the service plan...quite weird.  I stopped buying those after I lost my discount :(.  It was marked down from 499 to 475 so I thought I was getting a deal.  With tomorrow being Turkey day, and my loss of a digital camera, I thought this would suffice as a camera til I save up enough bank for the SLR.  I bought it and went home and checked Froogle to see if I got a good price.  Turns out Walmart had it for 419 dollars, so I printed off the sheet and went back to Best Buy to haggle.  I didn't open it, in case I had to threaten to return it.  I knew the price match policy, and it basically only discounts items that are available in a local store, the exact model, and in stock.  I had no idea if Walmart carried this item in the Coralville store, but I wanted to try anyway.  I went up to customer service with the camcorder (unopened) and the printout from Walmart.  We called the local store and it turns out they don't carry it.  The guy was reasonable and discounted me the price to which online Walmart was selling it for.  I lost out on the 10% price match discount, but I wasn't going to complain since I just saved myself 56 dollars.  I was pretty happy about the price I paid now.

From the few minutes I've played with it, I've learned some things.  The battery life with the freebie battery seems to suck.  It is around 70 minutes, which means I will probably have to buy a second battery.  I've read some review that say the video quality isn't very good, but it seems fine to me.  They didn't include a fancy import / edit tool for the files in the software included.  This doesn't bother me b/c I would prefer to access the drive and move the files around manually, but I could see how this would be cumbersome to a novice computer user.  I am also going to have to learn how to manipulate formats, because it stores them in a .mod file.  You can easily change the extension to .mpg or .mpeg and access them using players that can handle mpeg-2 formats.  I already had several players that had the codecs to play that format.  DVIX, WMP 11, PowerDVD, and NVDVD all played the files fine.

Next I am going to have to figure out how to get them into an iPod and create a DVD.  Should be some fun projects.  Hopefully I will get a video uploaded to the blog sometime soon.

On a side note, I also picked up Natalie's b-day present....two books from Barnes and Noble.  The books were both by Jenny Mcarthy: Baby Laughs and Belly Laughs.  She really wanted them, so I hope she likes them.

Jake 

Here is a clip from the soon to be famous first video clip of Natalie Feuerbach: