News

TV: four hours on a memory stick?

It looks like a sort of disk drive; what it actually is, is a VCR for Memory Stick flash memory storage; a Video Chip Recorder.

The device was announced in Japan earlier this year: it's called the Clie Pega-VR100K. By high-definition standards, it's no great shakes; it's half-half-VGA resolution at 320 by 240 pixels, and the frame rate is probably jerky by normal standards, too, at 15 frames per second.

Then again, on a hand-held Clie PDA, that's as good as it gets!

There's a full news story by Ed Hardy, Editor-in-Chief of Brighthand

Now it's shipping into the USA, and can be ordered direct from Sony.

Hardy's article quotes Russel Paik, VP of handheld marketing at Sony: "Digital video recorders allowed people to view TV and cable programs at anytime. We're adding a new facet to that possibility by enabling people to view those shows anywhere."

The catch, he says, is that you need a 1 gigabyte Memory Stick to work at serious video quality; if 320 by 240 is serious quality, that is. That would give you four hours of playback. It would also cost you $600.

"At the lowest quality, even a 128 MB Memory Stick can hold over two hours of video at 160 by 112 pixels," Hardy adds.

The VR100K itself, is cheap by comparison at $300 at SonyStyle.