April 16, 2007

Sandisk SDMV1-R V-Mate Video Recorder Review

SanDisk's V-Mate is a very cool product that is sure to be a huge hit with anyone that likes to take their media with them. It is basically a digital VCR that records onto memory cards that can be viewed later on the device of your choice.

It has fully scheduling capability so once it is hooked up to your cable box or PVR you can tell it what to record and off it goes. So with the on screen interface you can have it record that episode of 24 you don't want to miss and watch it on the train as you go to work. It can also hook up to your DVD player , VHS recorder( you still have one of thse! ) or TV and capture data right from the source. Want to finish watching that movie from last night, just throw it on a memory stick and you are all set.

It supports a wide array of media to record to including:

SD SDHC miniSD microSD microSDHC
(RS-)MMC (DV), MMCplus , MMC
Memory Stick/PRO/Duo/PRO Duo

On their site they also list some examples of devices that you can then watch your recorded media on:

Mobile phone
Handheld game console
PDA
Video Music Player
ersonal Media Player (PMP)
PC/notebook computer
V-Mate connected to your TV

Just so you know these recordings are meant to be viewed on a small device and so they won't look amazing if you try and watch them on your 50" TV. These are meant for handhelds and other small screen portable devices. The output resolution for this is only 640x480 with a frame rate of up to 30fps so as you can see it will look great on your phone, but nothing that much bigger.

This is something that we plan on getting in house shortly so that we can run some tests on it. We are very interested to see this guy in action. We love the ability to pull media off many different sources and store them on a memory card to be viewed later. After reading up on this we are betting that we will see a lot more devices like this in the future( that is if the crazy copyright people don't turn the attention on them and shut them down )

We will keep you posted when we get one and what our first hand thoughts are.

If you don't want to wait for that you can grab one at Amazon now.