October 10,2004In a time of merging technologies and melding devices Vivitar has released the rather unfortunately named multifunctional media recorder, the 'eek'. A video camcorder with digital still camera, MP3 player and voice recorder are rolled in to one small package.
Using a 256MB SD card in its slot and a long life lithium-ion battery the eek can record a maximum of more than one hour and twenty minutes of video or one thousand images or sixteen hours of sound clips and an unspecified number of MP3 music files. Measuring 103mm long x 62mm wide x 16mm deep the eek is sleek. The compact and stylish case is available in a black or white body finish.
It captures high quality MPEG4 video and sound in both VGA and XVGA formats. Offering five quality settings, it can be adjusted to allow for either maximum image quality or maximum recording capacity.
Featuring a fixed focus lens, eek captures the action from 0.8m to infinity while the 4x digital zoom enables a closer view. The eek's 230-degree rotating lens together with its compact size makes it quite a small camcorder.
The device has three image-shooting modes for everyday, night time and sporting conditions while variable exposure and white balance settings deliver better recording in low light situations. Eek also features five built-in filters including text, sepia, red, green and blue.
The 1.5 inch LPTS (Low Temperature Poly Silicon) TFT LCD screen has 120,000 pixels and is adjustable to four levels of brightness. The combined 2-megapixel digital still camera features interpolated image enhancement technology to offer an output resolution of up to 4-megapixels, allowing print outs up to A3 in size.
Other camera features include an optional automatic flash, a self timer with 10 second delay and DPOF for direct printing of photos from the camera's memory card files. In addition to its cam-corder and camera functions, the eek includes an MP3 player. Tunes can be listened to through either the built-in speaker or included headphones and volume is adjustable to 21 levels. The eek also has a voice recorder which records sound clips of varying quality ranging from 8kHz to 48kHz.
With a retail price of $449 the eek is certainly an economical way of accessing a wide range of digital capturing devices. It comes with a lithium-ion battery and charger and a bundled software package including Photo Suite, Photo Vista, WIN DVD Creator SVCD and Windows Media Player 9.0
Call 1300 363 741 for inquiries.
