CVS Camcorder
Glenn, at work, has been talking about the single use camcorders that CVS is carrying. Like a disposable camera you make your movies and exchange it for a DVD. Since I’m going skiing in Wyoming next week, I figured I’d pick up a couple of them (shown here in a photo taken by Chap). At $30 apiece I can deal with it getting dropped from a ski lift or buried in an avalanche. Recording time: 20 minutes.
It’s about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and fairly light. The LCD is surprisingly sharp - better than my year-old camera phone - and the low light performance appears to be quite good also. The only question is what the quality of the DVD will be. Based on the little bit I’ve been able to learn on the web it encodes MPEG-4 on a flash memory chip and runs off of two AA batteries (not user-serviceable). If I knew anything about hacking USB drivers together and had a month I might try to look at modifying it to be able to download movies to my laptop (20 minutes feels somewhat limiting, and the only editing you can do is to delete the previously recorded segment).
Perhaps I’ll get some good stuff worthy of posting here when I get back. Stay tuned.
Update 6/9/2005: I took the camcorder to be “developed” at my neighborhood CVS and got the DVD back in an hour. The results were passable, given what I was expecting. The actual resolution of the camera is difficult to discern; it’s probably close to CIF (320×240); the MPEG-2 of the DVD has the smaller video scaled up by about 150%, with a black border around the frame. The video itself shows pretty heavy macroblock artifacts due to being scaled up (and its undoubtedly low bitrate), and even appears to suffer an occasional error that could only be explained by a wrong bit (or more) in the stream, which seems slightly shoddy: either there’s a flaky solder joint inside (?) or the memory is bad. Note that I’ve only done one, so I don’t know if this is common. The DVD menus are nice, with a visual index to the various scenes.
If you poke around in the DVD’s directory structure you can find Windows Media Video files of the clips. Here’s a a short sample clip from the DVD: 545kb WMV
I still haven’t used the second unit I bought, but I like the thing. Its cheap cost makes you more likely to experiment with it (like strapping it onto your chest and going down a ski slope), and the limited feature set makes it just about right for goofy home movie style clips. Plus the 20 minute time limit keeps you thinking short, which is probably a good thing in home movies.
March 10th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Enough about “Glenn @ Work”…. i wanna read more of the hijinx and goings on with you and “Glenn @ Brother” in the fantastic world of Tucker …..although that camera looks mighty superb! De-lish, even!
March 11th, 2005 at 10:20 am
…….ALSO….. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my anxiety to hear you express your comtempt for the weed bag in the snowboard catalog! How dare you keep us all in suspense?
March 11th, 2005 at 10:36 am
I’m sure that after this week I’ll have plenty to say about trendyweedbag-toting snowboarders… patience!
March 11th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Also: don’t forget to make notes for a report on trendy snowboarder-toting weedbags. Enquiring minds, and all that.
March 20th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Here is a link to a site that has a hack for the CVS 1 time use camera.
http://vickers.homedns.org/PV2mods.htm
No word on hacks for the camcorder, but I’m going to stock up now because it’s only a matter of time before some one hacks it…
How cool will you be then? Very cool.
-Meatwad
June 15th, 2005 at 1:48 am
Pretty much as soon as I saw these things all I could imagine was duct taping them to my skateboard or helemet for snowboarding etc. Get some cool shots where I wouldnt dare do that with my existing camera and dont want to spend 300 bucks on a hlemet cam!
June 15th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Is the “processing” included in the initial $30?
June 15th, 2005 at 9:48 am
Unfortunately, no. For some reason a $12.95 fee is assessed when you return the thing for “processing.” I thought it was a mistake until I read it in a CNN article.
June 15th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
The camera goes for $30, even though the hardware probably costs somewhere near $100, because they assume they’re going to be able to turn these things around 4 or 5 times. the processing fee is actually quite steep, seeing as you’re only allowing people 20 minutes of recording time and getting a blurry blocked out version of your movie back probably isn’t going to make the consumer feel any better about it. What I’m worried about is that these aren’t going to catch on, and the only people buying them during this initial test roll-out are going to be folks like me that aren’t bringing the camera back at all. That will kill the program awful fast so that they can recover hardware costs - let’s hope it doesn’t happen!
June 15th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Wow.. Just when you thought naked pictures of yourself would give your developer a thrill…
June 17th, 2005 at 11:23 am
It stores them as WMF? That stinks. They should have used QT.
June 20th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
its sucks. at work at a cvs, you cant see back 2 or 4 movies ago…only the last…ONE CAMCORDER…the DVD-s arent a good brand, like and hour and half mpeg will fit on here, style boring, never never done on time because ONLY photo techs allowed to process these. NIGHT TIME/early eve FORGET IT.
————————jon
July 8th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
from what i understand, someone has desoldered the flash chip and hacked some interface to get the files off, he’s listed the contents, and apparently it’s pretty straight forward. wav files for the little system noises, the videos are 320×200 xvid, and there doesn’t look to be any encryption on the flash storage. some enterprising person just needs to pick apart the camera’s structure enough to make a USB driver. there even appears to be some camera out there using some similar architectures that someone could probably use to learn from (similar chipsets and other bits.) the USB cable is easy enough to make, one can be made from and old palm 3 cable or more commonly a shortened parallel centronics connector (from an old printer cable.)
http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/
July 26th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
i have the usb cable atached and it is recognizing the device as a saturn device though i dont have the drivers dos any one know where i can get the drivers for it?
July 31st, 2005 at 11:34 am
The video specs are common for AVI format digital camera/camcorders,
30FPS, 320 X 240.. Though, Aiptek makes a cheap $100 5MP still / 640 X 480 19FPS
(max settings shown) camera that uses Compact Flash..
I just started tinkering with the Ritz/Dakota & CVS PV2 still cams myself. (still got one stubburn CVS camera that refuses to unlock)
For those who think of using a shortened Centronics-36 connector, May I suggest finding a local electronics supply store, and pick-up a Centronics 24 (old IEEE-488 )
and just discard the shell. and only need to scrape-down the sides a little, then shore-up the opposite side by about .080 Inch (a flattened glob of hot-melt glue workes for me.)
But, honestly, 20 minutes of vid., is hardly worth it.. Instead of a DVD (of which more than 85% is wasted space..) they should’ve gone with VCD format,
but not all DVD players (older models) can handle that format
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:18 pm
THe res is 320×240 but you can make a USB cable and change the res up to 640×480 and increase the time allowed to record. Works great when you download the video yourself and reuse it. When you change the timer the compression is changed thus I assume the quality will drop slightly with each block of time increased. I currently use my camera at 640×480 and the times is set to 60 min.
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:28 pm
how do u do that ?
November 24th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
Soooooo, what are the steps to adjusting the video quality and duration?
February 24th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Me and a few other guys fly power kites and find that these cameras would be ideal to attach to the kite and film from up above, as they are light and cheap, so it doesn’t matter if they fall to the ground. The trouble is, you can’t get them in England. So if anybody wants to send me one that they don’t use any more (3.4version only) I’ll be happy to pay the postage.
February 26th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
“runs off of two AA batteries (not user-serviceable)”
Actually…they are.
There’s a small slot at the bottom of the camera. Stick the sharp end of a pencil in until it catches and slide towards the other end of the slot, you should be able to pop the battery cover off without a problem. Now there is a dark grey inner cover, slide in the direction opposite of the arrow on it, you should now be able to see and replace tha batteries.
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:12 pm
There are links to CronusKey a program used to unlock the camcorders with firmware version up to 55.13
http://drknife.com/macbook/index.php?itemid=10
September 6th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Actually these don’t need cronuskey and they have 18 inch lens extension…
http://cgi.ebay.com/CVS-Digital-Camcorder-Firmware-3-4-Remote-Lens_W0QQitemZ230024429555QQihZ013QQcategoryZ48514QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
September 17th, 2007 at 3:02 am
dude if you want to capture your fun then you had better step up to the plated on helemet cams. go to vio sport. i have been recording videos while snowmobiling for years with vio’s technology it cannot be beat. step up to the plate if you enjoy your sport that much and your friends as welll will enjoy it. the cameras are inexpensive now as newer models are currently comming out. STEP UP DUDE TO SOME REAL FUNN