Steve Jacobs, RIT associate professor of information technology, discusses technology gift ideas for the holidays during 13WHAM News This Morning.

Anchor: Are you still in need of some gift idea for this holiday season, Holly Maynard perhaps can help.
Female Anchor: Yesterday she went shopping with our tech guru from RIT and researched a number of hot products this year in the technology world. This half hour he shows us a good buy when it comes to camcorders and a way to watch whats on your old VHS tapes.

Holly: This morning were going for the big bang but the small buck when it comes to those technology gifts for the holiday gifts this season. Remember back in the day when those camcorders were huge, and really heavy on your shoulder, look what theyve turned into today. My, how things have changed. Steve Jacobs, whats this over here were looking at right now? Steve, of course, our tech expert from RIT.
Steve: These are personal pocket camcorders mainly aimed at, like, getting stuff up on the web, doing your U-Tube videos, those kinds of things.
Holly: The equivalent of a point and shoot camera.
Steve: Right.
Holly: But of course in the video camera world.
Steve: Right. Theres a bunch of companies making these. The ones that are the most popular at the moment are these flip camcorders because they come with their own software that just loads on the computer for editing and stuff like that. We have a low definition version
Holly: About 130 dollars and 150 dollars, is this a good buy do you think?
Steve: Sure, if thats what youre going to use it for. If you want to use it to document family vacations to put on the big screen or you want to be an independent filmmaker, not so much. But for web video, this ones good, this ones high def.
Holly: Ok, lets go see something that would be good for that.
Steve: But youll see the high def one there is 179, 200 dollars. If you really want to do more of the really capturing the family experience or making home movies versus just making little clips for the web, you want to take a look at these guys. These are all flash memory based camcorders, no tape just memory sticks, memory cards. For a little bit more money, like the 250 here versus the 200 dollar high definition flip, youre going to get a lot more control over your video, your aperture, youre going to get a higher quality zoom, youve got a better quality lens.
Holly: And still those are lower prices than they were last Christmas?
Steve: Oh sure, so family videos for long-term preservation you want to look at this. If you want high-end video for your web and your going to spend 200 bucks you might want to look at 250. If you just want to do web clips for your desktop and your video, those $129, $149, those are good for that.
Holly: Ok and those models we were just looking at were Panasonic and Samsung. And then finally, if your family is like mine and you have a ton of old VHS tapes lying around and youd like to see the m again but you cant because you dont have a VCR anymore, Steve says you need this. Whats that Steve?
Steve: This is a standalone DVD recorder. So youre going to plug your camcorder into the side here, its got the standard video and audio ports, its got the s-video port, it even has a DV port and if you want to just burn copies, whatevers on tape, without editing, just make duplications straight to DVD, this does a really good job. 200 dollars, relatively inexpensive for what it does, especially if youre going to reclaim a room in your house thats currently holding all those VHS tapes, that will help you out there.
Holly: So, 200 dollars for that?
Steve: Right. If your looking for a quick easy way to capture video and than edit on your desktop, this isnt quite the solution. Because it will make a DVD, but youll still have to rip the DVD to go ahead and get to the digital file
Holly: Ok, lots to think about. More money saving tips from Steve when it comes to some of the hot technology gifts this year, coming up.

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