The compact JVC GR-D90 is a stylish, go-anywhere digital video camcorder that incorporates all JVC's key camcorder technologies. This entry-level MiniDV camcorder is 50 percent smaller than previous models and features a 16x optical zoom, picture stabilization, digital still mode, JVC's Night Alive feature, and a large 3.5-inch LCD.
Optics & Audio
The GR-D90 offers a 680,000 CCD with 520 lines of horizontal resolution. Combined with JVC's super-hi-band processor, you'll be assured of capturing crisp, clear video. Equipped with a 16x optical zoom, the GR-D90 also features a 700x digital zoom that allows you to zoom in for incredible close-ups. You can also zoom in on any part of an image during playback with the 44x pinpoint zoom.
The GR-D90 also features PCM digital stereo sound in either 12-bit or 16-bit options. The 16-bit mode offers one set of stereo tracks and achieves the same quality as CD, while the 12-bit mode creates two sets of stereo tracks. Audio dub is possible when recorded in 12-bit mode.
Digital Stills
The still mode is capable of capturing crystal-clear still images of up to 1,024 x 768 pixels. The images are stored onto the included 8 MB MMC memory card; the GR-D90 is also compatible with Secure Digital memory cards. You can also record still images onto the video cassette with a "shutter" sound effect in full frame or pin-up mode.
More Features
- JVC's Night Alive feature boosts light sensitivity for a bright picture, even in situations with minimal illumination.
- A 3.5-inch tilting LCD screen for high-angle overhead shooting, low-angle shots, or even self portraits.
- The Picture Stabilizer system corrects camera shake instantly, giving you smooth and stable pictures.
- The Power Linked Operation feature prepares the camera to record simply by opening the LCD or pulling out the viewfinder.
- The IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connections provides fast loss-less digital transfer to a computer, or dubbing from or to another DV unit.
- A built-in analog-to-digital converter that converts analog audio-video signal to a digital signal, and can be recorded to a DV tape.
- Remote control features include playback with special effects, zoom, slow motion, and audio dubbing-insert editing.
MiniDV Format
MiniDV is the preferred format for personal and broadcast-quality video, highly regarded for its high audio and image quality. With up to 520 lines of horizontal resolution and minimum color noise, MiniDV delivers a 20 percent clearer picture than analog camcorder formats. This is all delivered on a cassette that's 1/12th the size of a standard VHS tape. A MiniDV tape offers digital recording time of 2 full hours--20 times the capacity of a CD.
Contents
This package includes the GR-D90 camcorder, 8 MB MMC memory card, AC adapter (AP-V13U), battery pack (BN-V408U), shoulder strap, AV cable (mini-3 RCA), USB cable, wireless remote control (RM-V718U), lens cap, and CD-ROM with Presto! ImageFolio and Presto! Mr. Photo 3 software.
1 pretty ordinary camcorder, firewire port is weak.
My freind bought this camcorder a sharper image. It is a decent camera, not great, not terrible. picture is average, sound is average. With this camera you dont get as much for the price as for a canon or sony. It has no mike input and no earphones. It doesnt support LANC like all other JVCs. The firewire port sucks. After two weeks of having the camera the pins inside it bent and the plastic the holds everything in place pretty much disitegrated. He returned the camera under warranty and got a new one. We learned that you have to be really careful with it.
2 Save your Money
I purchased this JVC GR-D90 camera on Amazon.com used it four times and it died, just like everybody else. This can only lead me to believe that the JVC Brands are unreliable. What a waste of money. I think I will try a Sony next time. I have lost all trust in the JVC brand name. If you are smart do waste your money.
3 love it
is a nice feature machine is great dont regreate buying itance quality one of the best with the bests prices
4 nice nice
has great quality not professional but nice video clips can be taken and nice still pictures remote very net and to down load photos is nice has great zoom in and out and the light you can actually make it better after words with the own fitures buy it is nice if you need a video cam and then some pictures so you dont need to carry both video and photo cams
5 great potential
this is a great camera it has a super great zoom quality is pretty good since you can fixed it after been recorded like the fact of the sill picture since you can just take the video then after words take out the pictures that you like the fact of getting and old vhs video of an old family recording and doing some still pictures for you albums is great brings all the kit necesary to work on the pc and print pictures or yoy just take it to the photo print with the memory card and develope pictures is a great camera people complaing about quality and i think is great if you are not proffesional or if know how to fixed the color after words buy it is great and the remote is a plus
6 Almost Perfect...For The Price
The JVC GRD90 is, overall, a pretty good MiniDV camcorder. If you already know a lot about camcorders, skip to paragraph 2. If you are new to this area, continue reading below.
1--If you're looking for a video camera that you can use to edit video on your PC or MAC, then you need a digital camcorder that is IEEE-1394 compliant. You don't have to worry about remembering that, though...an easy name to remember is FireWire. This peticular camcorder meets those standards. Another thing you want to look for is Pixels...in this case, the higher the number, the higher the quality of the camera. This camera has decent video quality. However, especially when indoors, this camera's video image can get a bit grainy. If you are looking for a camera that has really good quality, I'd recommend something like the JVC GR-DV500. If you are simply looking for a digital video camera that will record Sally's band concert, then this is the camera for you. (Proceed to Paragraph 3)
2--this camera is IEEE-1394 compliant, making it suitable for video editing. However, it only has 680,000 pixels (0.68 megapixels), so if you are looking for a high-quality camcorder, I'd recommend shopping around for a camera with a least 1.0 megapixels. The DV port accepts both input and output, which will probably come in handy at some point in time. This is not a professional camcorder, so I do not recommend buying this is you are a professional videographer. If your budget is limited, however, this will do for your basic fliming and editing needs. (Proceed to Paragraph 3)
3--Another great feature that pros and amatures alike will enjoy is the big 3.5 inch screen. You might be thinking, '3.5 inches? That's tiny!'...however, you'll come to find that 3.5 inches is quite large for a camcorder LCD screen. Overall, this is a pretty good digital video camera, it's only major flaw being that some indoor shots may look incredibly bad. This camcorder is almost perfect...for the price.
7 SOME PEOPLE ARE SO HAAAA
WELL I BOUGHT THIS CAMERA FOR MY FIANCE AND IT WORKS GREAT AT THE BEGINING I TOD QUALITY SUCK BUT WHEN YOU LEARN ACTUALLYTO USE THE ACM IT BECOMES EASY YOU CAN CHANGE THE LIGHT AFTER YOU RECORD OR TAKE PICTURES TO HOOK IT UP ON THE PC IS MAD EASY IS NOT AS BAD AS PEOPLE THINK WORKS THE SAME A STHE SONY MY DAD HAS AND THE CANNON MY FATHER IN LAW HAS SO SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE PREMITIVES THAT DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THE CAM AND THEY BLAME THE PRODUCT TO BE A FEALURE SO IF YUO WANT A NICE CAM THAT TAKE STILL PICTURES GET IT WONT RETURN THE CAM TRUST ME
8 whats the point?
I bought this camera for the novelty of putting videos of my kids into the computer. this camera wont do that! I also wanted a webcam, this camera wont do that either! I thought at least i wouldnt have to lug around two cameras on outings, one video, and one still. well, its ok if you dont mind dark, extremely grainy photos. even once you take the time to lighten them up in your pc, they are still terribly grainy. compared to my $200 cannon hi-8 (ES-75) this camera is garbage. the video is grainy when you record indoors, which is bad unless you are homeless and do most of your recording of the kids outside anyways. but we live in a house like most people so the quality of video sucks. NO FLASH for the digital still camera, NO LIGHT for the video camera. "night-alive" is horrible. its like turning on a strobe light, the frame rate is like 3 per second, so you get blurry smeared people flashing on the screen 3 times a second.
whats the point of having a digital video camera, if you cant do anything digital with it? DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY!
9 no no no
This digital camcorder is cute. Small in size and weight- perfect sized LCD monitor. But those are the only existing pros. I was sooo disappointed with the quality of the indoor lighting. Unless you ONLY enjoy recording while strolling outside in the park, don't get it. Please. Spare your wallet.
10 Listen to the other reviews!
I purchased this product based on JVC's reputation and the fact that I've used one of their VHS-C's for years. However, I was extremely disappointed with this unit. My JVC GR AX-910 VHS-C tapes, converted to digital via my ATI 8500DV video card to the hard drive, has a better picture quality than this digital camera. No joke.
11 BEWARE, many flaws with this product.
I bought this hoping that i would get a decent camcorder that worked. Well unfortunately it worked for about two or three weeks and it died. The battery was fully charged and i took very good care of it, still it is now a paperweight, since i lost my reicept i'm out the cash. Don't make the same mistake i did. And the quality of the indoor shooting sucks as well
12 Unreliable; poor service
I purchased this camera rather than a Sony due to the comparative specs but lower price. Shame on me. The camera worked for one hour of video taping (over a period of two months) before dying completely. I took it to the authorized service center, who informed me that they (and JVC) do not accept Amazon receipts as proof of purchase date - since they may be forged. Wonderful, accuse your customers of being criminals.
After several phone calls and FAXes to JVC and the service center and back again (they wanted ME to be the middle man!) the service center repaired my camera. Sort of. Again, it worked for a half hour of video taping before completely dying again, in the same fashion.
Meanwhile, the warranty is expired (90 days) and the 30 day labor warranty has expired. Video cameras in our house are used once every month or so, so the 30/90 day warranties expire very quickly. I expect that I'll have to pay $$$ to have this lemon repaired again.
In the future I'll stick with Sony, which appears to make more reliable product.
13 Unacceptable indoors
I bought this camcorder despite concerns about poor indoor performance with the thought that if I tape indoors I'll just turn up the lights. Doesn't work. The amount of graininess is simply unacceptable, and seems to be accentuated on my 32" HDTV. No adjustments to the camera could remedy this. It's embarrassing to show this when my 11 year old Sony Hi8 camcorder does such a better job.
14 Great Value!!!
The 3.5" LCD Screen makes this camcorder really easy to operate, even outdoors. The picture really bright & has lots of color, even indoors and the 16X optical zoom is much better than my old JVC.
15 Excellent zoom and great picture
I found the GRD90 very easy to use.The picture quality came out great.I also liked the 3.5" lcd. I could never see myself going to anything smaller.Also the size of the camera was important to me.Overall, I would have to say that JVC made a great and easy camera for me.Thank you.
16 Great Picture, Easy to Use, Works Flawless w/ my Apple!!
I just purchased this camcorder and love the 3.5" screen. I can video my kids at their eye-level instead of hovering over them. Compared to a 2.5" screen this is much easier to use.
The color quality is excellent, and the picture looks great on my 36" TV. I also have a new Macintosh computer and it plugged right in with the firewire and I can edit videos.
The stabilizer stays on in the automatic mode, which my old JVC didn't do.
17 Only Bad For Pros
Hi...I had been wanting this camera for such a long time, but didn't know if it was the right way to go. I looked at other reviews, and there were many complaints about terrible picture quality. That discouraged me, but when I went to Circuit City and tried it out, it was awesome! It is very stylish, and an excellent camera. Outdoors, the picture quality is excellent. Indoors it's excellent too, except when in low lighting conditions, the picture is slightly (and I mean very slightly) off-color. This (or so I believe) should only have impact on your choice if you're a professional (or really obsessed with perfect graphics...). The bad thing about this camera is the digital stills. I mean, they're not terrible, but you're much better off just buying a regular digital camera for those purposes (like myself). But that doesn't have any impact on my feeling toward the camera, because I don't plan on using it for still photos.
In conclusion, the JVC GR-D90US is an excellent, easy to use video camera that anyone can enjoy! This is a great buy!!!!
18 Don't waste your time...quality of color is poor!
Pros: Small with many feathers and good price.
Cons: Bad quality of color and auto focus, Objects may have low visiblilty under low light sutiation, The Night-shot is not pratical with very slow shutter speed.
I'll be the first to admit this camcorder is very stylish and the 3.5 LCD were some of the major factors why I purchased it. But when it came to crunch time, this is nothing more than a pretty package with not much substance. A typical camcorder functions,(manual, auto, night live etc) but the digital still camera is why I rated this product so low. A majority of my stills came out with a yellow tint. YELLOW!! I know not to expect much from a camcorder/digital camera but I certaintly don't want any of my pictures yellow when it shouldn't be. I know you are probably thinking it was the lighting. But it wasn't. I took pictures in all different lighting environments. And my pictures still came back with a yellowish tint. Bottom line, I had a very bad experience with this cam
19 Nice and small but poor indoor and poor firewire!
I've had the camera a bit over two months now. I have never been happy with the indoor lighting and never knew others felt the same way until I just read the other comments here. Last week I even wrote to JVC website support asking what setting I could change to fix it. Never heard back (ie: Poor customer service!).
So anyway, just buy a new computer with Firewire ports, and a DVD burner so I can use this camera to its max. But guess what? The firewire port does work right! I was able to transfer one hour of video after fighting a good 2 hours trying to get the PC to recognize the camcorder (all you should have to do is plug it in and turn it on!). But then today I wanted to transfer more video...can't figure out how to get it to respond again. It won't hook up. I've tried everything. Don't know if I can return it this late for my money back, and now will have to try JVC support again for help, which sounds like I won't get any. Don't buy!
20 horrible night shooting, bad microphones, bad pic quality..
I bought my JVC GRD90 last week.... which I promptly returned after few days. I got Sony's DCR-TRV19 instead.
JVC GRD90 claims that it's got all the nice features, yeah, maybe it does have the features, but the qualities are really bad. I'd rather get Sony's DCR-TRV19 which is in the same price range. Sony might have less features but they have better qualities....
For example, the night shooting of JVC GRD90, so called "night-alive" vision sucks... "night alive" is supposed to give you a colorful vision as to sony's green screened "night shooting", but trust me, you rather have a sony's quality green-screened night shooting than JVC's horrible horrible "night alive" shooting.
The pic qualities of JVC, especially in indoor or in low-light condition are very poor. Even in outdoor the images are very gray and dark.
The microphones aren't as good as sony's either.
Oh, and when i was buying this model at the good-guys store in emeryville, CA there were so many opened-box items of this model. I should have initially suspected as to why so many people returned this item.
21 Good camera with a couple of flaws
I just bought this video camera from Costco at a good price. Got it home and tried it out immediatley. I love the small size and it's so light weight. Also, for a non-tech person likle myself it was very easy to use. We had no problem playing it back on our tv through the VCR and software installtion to download the pictures from the digital camera function was good. Two complaints: I don't like the black and white viewfinder and the pictures from the digital camera function are very grainy but otherwise it seems great.
22 Nice compact camera, but...
I just bought this camcorder, thinking I got a really good deal for it. I took it home and wanted to try it out. Like the previous review said, "it does not shoot well indoors". Well, that is true! I took a few pictures indoors with the lights on (it was nighttime) and when I downloaded it to my computer, I saw that the pictures were very poor. It was fairly well-lit indoors, yet the pictures were very dark. The LCD display is very poor as well. When moving the camera, the image was very hazy and the resolution seemed poor. It also says that you can shoot at night. I tried taking a picture of my daughter in a dim room and even when I set it on "Twilight" the picture was very dark. The retail price for this model was ... and I got it at an even lower price because it was an open box model (sales person said there were no mechanical defects and there were only minor cosmetic flaws). It was not even worth that lower price. I will be returning it tomorrow. I advise anyone looking to shoot anything indoors, not to purchase this camcorder. I will be looking at other manufacturers.
23 Just doesn't shoot well indoors
I wanted a camcorder that had quiet motor noise and could shoot well indoors. The noise was acceptable but indoor shots were very grainy. You had to crank up the lamps in order to get an acceptable shot. Loved the 3.5" display though. Returned to CC and got the Canon ZR70. Returned that as well. Read review.
