Customer Reviews:
  What Were They Thinking July 31, 2006
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Other people have covered the good aspects of this camcorder - light weight, no tapes/discs to mess with, pretty good menu. However, these are easily outweighed by the lack of thought by JVC's engineers; and to add insult to injury, the downfall of this camcorder hinges on the very feature that is supposed to be it's selling point - storing video files on a hard drive (and not other media).
You would think that if this was to be the camcorder's selling point, that these knuckleheads would have come up with an easier system for transferring the video files from the camcorder's hard drive to your computer's. The complete lack of thought is amazing. To come up with the goofy .mod naming convention is outside my comprehension. Why not give customers a naming convention with which they are generally familiar? (Besides the .mod files, I've also got .moi files- what the heck is that about? Are they important? Do I need to keep them associated with the .od files? And the uselessness of the Capty software (even its name is goofy) is astounding.
Finally, I don't mind having to actually read the users' manual. However, in this case it's useless. It doesn't explain anything about file transfers, the naming conventions, etc.
Obviously, the customer wasn't first in JVC's thinking. I would recommend staying away from this camcorder...What good is the convenience of recording on a hard drive is the files then become a mystery to access and edit. Stick with the "inconvenience" of tapes & discs...I wish I had!
 Greatest camcorder ever! July 10, 2006
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I read all the reviews and have to say I have no idea what they are talking about. Sure you need a computer thats not 3 years old and up to date software like anything thats new these days. But just imagine NEVER having to buy tapes or CD's again! And the picture is always prefect! I am in love with this camcorder. Its like my forth one and I had the best DVD camcorder, there is just no way to compair them. Inside, outside, in the sun, in the dark are all a great picture. My sister used it for her sons birthday , now she bought one of her own and loves it as much as I do. And all the people having issues transfering video files or pictures to anything, hmmm, I dont know but it takes me 5 to 10 minutes to sort and then i just burn them. You have to buy this camcorder, you'll love it!
A new Trend in Video !!! June 11, 2006
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am a bit perplexed by the odd reviews this camcorder has gotten.. Personally, I am very happy with mine... no real problems... of course, I don't profess to be a geek....
Good idea, implementation suffers... May 31, 2006
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I was excited to have a camcoder device and not bother with any media, so bought this one before our trip to Tahoe. Well, I'm not gonna say it's horrible - may be someone will find it suitable for the purpose but these are my thoughts :
good :
- very light (i've checked the bag couple of times to see if it's inside, it felt so light.
- bright lcd screen
- fancy menu
- convinient presentation of clips : you see first frames of your footage tiled on the screen - very easy to navigate.
bad :
- no viewfinder : that mkes it impossible to use in a bright environment
- video quality is avg to poor, for example green foliage comes together to a green pixely substance
- takes long time to start up
- turns off when you close lcd screen (was annoying for me)
- digital image stabilizer (doesn't compare to optical one at all...)
Once again, it might be suitable for someone, but I'm looking for better wuality, view finder and i guess optical image stabilizer...
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V.
Indoor picture quality not sufficient. May 11, 2006
50 out of 50 found this review helpful
First the good: this camera is small and very convenient in MANY ways and you don't have the cost of tapes or mini CD's. And if you are a little computer savvy, the file format issue that people are always complaining about really isn't that big of a deal. I have Pinnacle Studio Plus 9.x (ie, with all the latest online updates to that version) and it handles the files just fine once you rename the file extension from .mod to .mpg. I've seen a lot of reviews here and elsewhere on the Internet that Adobe Elements Premiere 2.0 also handles the files just fine. I think ULead and a few others might as well. If you aren't that computer savvy (and don't necessarily want to be), then you may want to consider another camera just for this reason alone (unless perhaps you buy JVC's external DVD burner drive and are happy with mostly unedited clips).
However, I have learned my lesson by putting too much trust in Amazon's online reviews and discounting what is said in official reviews too much sometimes. I don't think any of the reviews here mention this camera's poor indoor (low-med light) picture quality... so I figured the official reviews of it I found elsewhere online were just being too picky. PC Magazine does a good job of describing the poor (especially low to medium light) picture quality in their Oct 17, 2005 review of this camera (you can find it by searching PCMag.com - search on "GZ-MG30"). I'm sure there are many other reviews noting the picture quality issue as well.
I am giving this a 2 rating (really s/b about 2.5, no option for that) because I feel the low to medium light picture quality issue is enough to sink this camera for many people... especially at this price (I paid $550). If it was only $400, then I would have given it 3 stars (for overall price/value). If you will be using it almost exclusively outdoors, then I could probably give it a begrudging 4 stars.
For my all-around purposes, I am dissatisfied with this camera and wish I could return it. If you don't have good video quality, then nothing else really matters, does it? For some people, this camera might be just fine, but for the rest, I hope this review saves you from a costly mistake.
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