a few months ago I did a video about the
Flip Ultra video camera from 2008
and in that video I briefly showed one
of its competitors:
the Sony Net Sharing Cam. Today I want to
do a video all about this camcorder
not because of how good it is but rather
because of how bad it is
and how much of a failure it was in the
marketplace
first a little bit about these Flip
cameras they became popular in 2007
they had two models on the market at the
time they had a model with 30 minutes of
built-in recording time for 149
dollars and a model with one hour of
recording
time for 179 dollars
these were very popular because of their
simplicity
and ease of use and they run on
standard AA batteries
it records onto built-in flash memory
that is non-upgradable
but you can flip out this USB arm and
plug it straight into your computer
it has built-in editing software that's
very simple
and easy to use and these were a
big success
and Sony wanted to get a piece of market
so in
September 2007 they released this
the NSC-GC1 Net Sharing Cam
for a price of two hundred dollars
and you can see some similarities with
the Flip camera
for example its overall size
and it was also specifically marketed
towards making
YouTube videos back when that was a hot
new platform that everybody was
uploading short low-quality videos onto
but right away you can see some major
differences between the Flip camera
and this one, for example all these
complicated controls
it has a flash on the front for taking
photos
and a flip-out LCD so they're clearly
going
for more professional quality appearance
and functionality of this device
compared to this simple
point-and-shoot Flip camera; I mean you
can see right away the difference in
size of the
screens between the two
so you think this would take a lot
higher quality video than a Flip camera
in addition to the higher price of this
model
another factor is that the built-in
memory is
basically worthless it's only good for
recording about 30 seconds of video or
for taking
one photo at the fine quality
so you're pretty much forced to buy a
Sony Memory Stick
which goes in here. Back when this was
new
a one-gigabyte Sony Memory Stick cost
about thirty dollars
so you're already spending about twenty
dollars extra for the camcorder
compared to a Flip camera but in
addition to that you had to spend
another thirty dollars
for the Memory Stick so overall it cost
about fifty dollars more
than a comparable Flip camera and this
actually does take very good quality
photos
it has a 5 megapixel image sensor and a
flash on the front
and the quality of the photos you can
get out of this are actually still
really pretty good I'll show some
examples of that on the screen right now
but in terms of taking video of this
that's a different story
it has the same maximum video resolution
as the Flip camera
640 x 480 at 30 frames per second
but it also gives you choices of
320 x 240
at 30 frames per second and 320 x 240
at
15 frames per second and you can see
this thing just shut off on me because
it uses an internal
rechargeable battery which was not meant
to be
user-replaceable unlike the AA
cells that a Flip camera runs on
and on this one it no longer holds a
charge so I'll need to plug in the AC
adapter...
some beautiful clouds out today though I
can't really see it in this
LCD screen because it's kind of washing
out in the sunlight
...so unlike the Flip camera where when you
bought it you basically just got the
camera itself
and it included everything you needed
built into it with the Sony you got a
whole bag full of accessories to go
along with it
so if we open this up we can see
the first thing is the power cord
and the included AC adapter although
this is not the original one this one
originally came with a PSP but it
happens to be compatible
so it's what I use so to power it you
need a power cord, power adapter
you also got a USB cable because it
doesn't have
the built-in flip-out USB arm like on
this
you also got a video output cable for
connecting to your TV
here's the built-in rechargeable battery
which is not meant to be user-
replaceable
but actually I already replaced it on
this one
and now the replacement is going bad
because
I just recharged this thing last night
and today already it only lasted for a
couple minutes
so I guess I'll need to replace it again
and finally we have this little thing
that broke off the back of the camcorder
it was originally attached by a
little rubber
extension that just snapped off so
that is no longer holding on like it
originally did
so now that we're plugged in and powered
up I can show you more about this
camcorder first of all this is not the
original hand strap I took this off of a
broken
Flip camera because I did not originally
get this with
a hand strap but if I open up the screen
to turn it on
it has a rather nice looking LCD screen
and the video quality as viewed from
this little screen
is actually pretty good but that's not
representative of how this thing
actually records
because even when it was new and people
didn't exactly have high expectations
about the video quality
of video cameras meant for recording
YouTube videos
remember in late 2007 the standard
resolution of YouTube videos was
320 x 240
and you were limited to a maximum of
10 minutes so
people didn't exactly expect high
quality but even back then they were
disappointed about the quality of this
camcorder
because it did not match up well, believe
it or not, to the Flip camera -- this thing
actually records much better quality
video
than this despite its more professional
appearance with a lot more controls so
the initial expectations of having all
these controls was that
it would be a higher quality camcorder
than one of these
but in reality it was the exact opposite
here's a quick
video quality comparison between the
Flip camera
and the Sony NSC-GC1 Net Sharing Cam
and when this was new it was also
criticized for the confusing layout of
these controls because
as you naturally hold this in your hand
your
thumb falls up here so you would think
this would be the recording button but
no, that's just for going through the menus
the actual recording buttons are down
here and there's two separate recording
buttons
one for taking photos another for taking
movies
so you have to hold your thumb lower
down
and remember which of the two buttons
you want to press
when you start recording you also get
buttons for the digital zoom which is
very low quality because it's just
digital zoom so the quality definitely
gets worse the more you zoom in
as if it wasn't bad enough all zoomed
out here's a test of the digital zoom
that's 2X zoom
that's 4X zoom so we can go briefly
through the menus here
which is one thing the Flip camera did
not have -- this had no manual controls
whatsoever
you just start recording, take your video
and stop recording and that's it
this you get all these different scenes
you have auto, program, twilight,
twilight portrait, soft snapshot,
landscape,
high speed shutter, beach, snow,
fireworks, candle -- so you would think with
all these settings
this would be very high-quality video
but that is definitely not the case with
this camcorder
and in the setup menu...
hello!?...
OK, I didn't understand how to use it
which is another one of the criticisms
people had of this camcorder when it was
new: the unintuitive
and confusing controls and I certainly
agree
and when you go into playback mode you
get all these controls
for doing different things: DPOF, whatever
the heck that is
printing, slideshow, resize, rotate,
divide... and I can do a whole video just
going through all these controls but
that's not really
the main interest of this thing
it's just how
miserable of a failure this was for Sony
because they got all the wrong ideas of
why people liked these things
people liked these Flip cameras because
they were cheap,
simple to use, and had relatively good
quality
for uploading to YouTube so what they
came out with as their competitor was
more expensive, lower quality, more
complex and confusing to use
so it's no wonder it was a failure and
you may be thinking, oh
how bad could it really be in terms of
video quality
especially since it looks OK through
the LCD here... well, I'll show you some
videos I recorded with this
back in the summer of nice bright
outdoor scenes
ideal conditions for recording video
on a camcorder and you can see for
yourself what the quality is like and
this is at its maximum quality
of 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second...
here's just a quick test of using the
Sony Net Sharing Cam
in bright indoor lighting just to get a
quick look at the
Digital8 Handycam I was
recording the first part of this video
on
that's a Suzuki Kizashi in front of me a
really nice car but they didn't sell a
lot of them
I actually test drove one of them back
when they were new
with a six-speed manual transmission
it's actually the first
six-speed I ever drove; nice car,
just pretty rare... just a shot of my
2018 Volkswagen Jetta
it's a little bit breezy today so we'll
see if it's picking up any wind noise on
the microphone
yes those are button copy signs
YouTube's video compression is probably
smoothing out a lot of the graininess of
this camera's footage
so I've slowed down this clip so you can
more easily see
this really weird dancing pixels effect
that occurs in scenes containing high
detail
and high contrast I've never seen
anything like this on another video
camera but it's very visible and
distracting
so yeah, I think you'll agree that the
video quality *is*
actually that bad and Sony also bundled
this with their Picture
Motion Browser software which has the
remarkable combination of being too
complex and too confusing to use
and also too limited in what it can
actually do -- one reviewer
of this camera said that was the worst
software he has ever used
so like I said, this was introduced in
September 2007 at a price of two hundred
dollars
and it was such an unmitigated disaster
that by
April 2008 it was already on its
final clearance sale for half price:
$99 and by the summer of 2008
any remaining inventory was being sold
for less than eighty dollars
after the Net Sharing Cam was
discontinued Sony did replace it with
the moderately more
popular Webbie series of camcorders
which are much more simplified and
easier to use
and did have better video quality
including HD
although they still had an appalling
lack of low-light sensitivity
and then they followed that with their
Bloggie series
which had a wider variety of models
some of which were
pretty good; others which were really not
and again were moderately successful in
the marketplace
although by the time Sony had really
perfected their pocket-sized camcorders
the popularity of these things had faded
away
in favor of recording video on
smartphones
so this was just a quick look back at
Sony's hilariously bad
first attempt at making a camcorder
specifically for recording
YouTube videos. By now it's just a
forgotten footnote in their corporate
legacy
but I think it's worth revisiting just
to see how
badly they missed the mark in the
marketplace with this thing
I mean, I actually do like this form
factor with the flip-out LCD on the side
and when I was first using this to
record video and just looking at it
through the LCD I thought, hey, this is
not really that bad
but when I got home and I took out the
Memory Stick
and viewed the videos on my computer I
realized
yeah, it really *is* that bad