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Wednesday, June 08, 2005

"I am Jack's disposable lifestyle" 

So on Monday CVS started selling their pocket-sized 'disposable' camcorders. That's right, I said camcorder . $29 to buy it, $12.99 to get a DVD of your movies, 20 minutes of video per device. Obviously, this is crazy expensive. For $12.99 they should give you your home movies and a copy of "Fight Club." But also obviously, CVS must plan on reselling the 'disposable' hardware they get back from you for processing so they don't lose money. There's no way anyone can sell a 1/5" CCD, a microprocessor, some compact flash, and an LCD for $29. So they want you to bring it back ... but what if you don't? The device has some kind of custom USB port on it, that can almost certainly be connected to a PC with the correct drivers. There are only so many ways to talk USB in terms of protocol: bulk, isochronous (likely), and interrupt. So once you write a driver the only trick is decrypting the data. (I have to assume that it's encrypted) I'm going to say 'when' and not 'if' here. WHEN that driver gets created you'll be able to 're-use' the disposable camera yourself without returning it to CVS. You might even be able to hack in a 512 / 1GB compact flash to record 40, 60, or even 90 minutes. But at a data rate of 3MB/sec for DV the video quality can't possibly be full-frame NTSC DV. Or 20 minutes would consume 3.6GB of compact flash storage. So it's either half-frame/quarter-frame, or some RT MPEG format. I'd guess MPEG-2 so they can go quickly to DVD. The quality might be pretty horrible. Then again they might have used MPEG-4 in which case there's plenty of space for high-quality video. I don't own one yet - but I will soon. I wish I had more free time so I could write that driver.
// posted by Cauthon @ 6/08/2005 01:13:00 PM   [ 4 Comments ]  Click here to add your 2 cents!
Comments:
Well, I wish I could figure out all that stuff!! I'll bet they're counting on the fact that 95% of people will have NO IDEA how the thing works or what to do with it beyond the explicit, probably picture-animated instructions.

Just call me fifty PERcent.

Haha, I crack myself up.
posted by Blogger Emily : 6/09/2005 10:38:00 AM   
That is awesome. Personally I doubt they bothered to even encrypt the footage, beyond compressing it somehow. I'm in no mood to write a driver, but I give it maybe two weeks before someone less lazy hacks this thing.
posted by Blogger Student : 6/09/2005 02:22:00 PM   
Is that Fity Percent? Or do you read it Fifty, but pronounce it Fity?

I think you're right about the encryption, Chris. At best they probably have some kind of lock/unlock key so they can invoke the DMCA anti-circumvention stuff. Although I guess the material isn't copyrighted.

I stopped by the CVS on Winton Road to see how sales are going. They had two racks set aside for the cameras, but both were empty. I wasn't too disappointed. I think I might wait that two weeks until the hacks start appearing before test driving one of them.
posted by Blogger Cauthon : 6/09/2005 03:52:00 PM   
That DEFINITELY is Fity Percent. I just wasn't sure how to convey that. ;)
posted by Blogger Emily : 6/10/2005 10:25:00 AM   
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