Cheap Dual Camera Car DVR with GPS

Chinavasion got in touch with me recently. I hadn't spoken to them for a long while so it was a bit of a surprise when they suggested that I might want to look at a car camera for them. I've done quite a few car camera reviews recently, so wasn't entirely enthusiastic about the idea until I had a good look at the camera on their website. This camera did seem to offer a lot of features for a low price and I hadn't tested a dual-camera car DVR before, so I asked them to send one over and here is my review of it. Just to confirm, I didn't pay for this camera (other than the usual Import Duties).

Slightly off topic - Answers to common questions about car cameras.

There are a few questions that I get asked virtually every day via email about car cameras. To save me typing the same answers out countless times a month, I'd like to try and address them here.

I often get asked to comfirm which is the best car DVR that I've tried, or which one I would recommend. I really cannot answer this one easily because all the cameras that I have tried have some issues which mean that I can't hand on heart recommend any of them wholeheartedly. I like to test things out and let the viewer make their own mind up as to whether the item is suitable for them. I've really only tested a very small fraction of the car cameras on the market today...so it's highly unlikely that I've stumbled across the best or worst models out there. 

Another type of question I get asked regards inappropriate uses of these cameras. One example is when someone  asked which car camera was the best one to use for shooting a road trip travelogue. Well a car camera is not the right camera for this purpose unless you just want a jerky fisheye view of the last 45 mins of your two week trip. For this purpose I'd suggest getting a video camera and a decent windscreen mount, or at the least an action camera. Always try and get the right camera for the job, no one camera does everything. 

The most common question and baffling question I get asked regards using a car camera as a security camera. The usual scenario is that the person asking for advice is a victim of car vandalism and they want to catch the offender in the act. The reason I say that this is baffling, is because when I think about it, everything seems wrong with this idea. Ok, so if you live in an area where some idiots like to vandalise cars, wouldn't leaving a camera in a car make it more of a target? A car camera also poinsts out of a car, therefore it's pointing away-from rather than towards the scene of the crime.  Someone could steal all your tyres and scratch a key down both sides of a car and not be caught on the camera pointing out of the windscreen. Finally crimes like this invariably happen at night, a camera in a car at night would need to have nightvision and a power source connected that could last overnight...not a normal feature of a car camera. If it used motion activation it would most likelt not pick up on a person walking past your car in the dark. So the only thing I can suggest for someone in this unfortunate situation is perhaps installing CCTV on a house but the answer does not lie with a car camera.

And finally I'd just like to say that with any reviews I do, I cannot comment on the long-term reliablilty of a gadget. I'll leave that for others to do in the comments, and I appreciate the feedback. I only get to test a gadget out for a short time and then have to move on to the next. The V1000GS is a good example of a camera that worked fine for me, but other people had big issues with subsequently. So again, I'm not endorsing any of these items, just saying what I see. So please choose carefully and do as much research as you can before spending your hard earned money.

The Korg Kaossilator 2 - Fun product, dull video

I realised half way through making this video that it wasn't turning out how I wanted. Demonstrating all the features of a musical gadget as complicated as the Kaossilator meant that there would be way too many shots of my hands just tapping away at the same plastic black and yellow box.

I like to try and vary the shots in my videos whenever possible, and the sections where I demonstrate the functions, buttons or on-screen-menus of a device always ends up being the dullest segments of my videos. In the past i've tried speeding these segments up, using freeze frames, or putting them PIP, all in an attempt to make them more visually interesting. 

Unfortunately all the features of the Kaossilator would need to be demonstrated in the same visually dull manner, so I decided to it was better for me to cut the video short. By doing this I hope that the video doesn't overstay it's welcome, but as a result, I've also left out a number of the device's features. These include sampling, loading loops, altering pitch etc….but I think what is left in the video should give enough of an idea as to whether the Korg Kaossilator would be of interest to the viewer. 

I think it's a really fun musical gadget, but unfortunately it doesn't hold much enough visual interest to warrant a complete video demonstration. It's a bit like someone talking about a guitar for 20 mins……I'd much rather just hear them play it. 

Update 16/05/12 - Contrary to what I said in the video, it is possible to load and save loops quickly by holding function and pressing the I or II keys. Also the Function menus can be scrolled through by holding Function and using the scroll bar thing. There are a couple of other useful key shortcuts as well. The price was £130 and I bought mine from Dawsons (who's service I'd definitely recommend). 

The Smart ForTwo vs The Toyota IQ (an owners perspective)

A bit of a departure this one. I regularly review gadgets that work inside a car.....but up until now I've never reviewed a car itself. People from outside the UK often comment, that to them, I sound like James May....so I thought, why not follow in the footsteps of my sound-alike and attempt to review my new car. After all, a car is probably the most expensive gadget that most of us will ever buy.

Now I must point out that this is not a traditional car review, I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about cars to do a detailed critique of things like performance and handling, instead I've just concentrated primarily on comparing the general design and practicality of my new car against my old car. One reason for doing this is because both of these cars are targeted towards the same customer, which is very apparent from their names (Smart, IQ... get it?). There should therefore, I assume, be a significant number of people interested in seeing a comparison video of these two ‘City Cars’, from someone who has owned both.

The two cars being compared are a 2009 Smart For Two Coupe Passion 998cc and a 2012 Toyota IQ3 1.33 with the optional CVT (Auto) Gear-box

This was a complicated video for me to put together because I had to trade in one car to get the other. I therefore didn’t have the luxury of doing a side by side comparison between the two vehicles. Instead I shot all the footage for one car and then a couple of weeks later attempted to replicate those shots with the new car.

This video isn’t intended to be a basic, ‘which one is best’ type video because that’s really not for me to decide, I’m just pointing out some of the features of each car. The Smart has a significant disadvantage in a direct head to head comparison due to the fact it was three years older and worth approximately a third of the purchase price of my new IQ. The Smart has had a couple of minor revisions to trim and body panels since the model shown in the video, but the overall basic design and mechanics remain unchanged since 2009.

I still have a lot of fondness for the Smart and like it’s exterior dimensions, plastic body panels and overall concept. It is more quirky and interesting than the IQ and in some ways it’s more practical. However when it comes to choosing a city car that incorporates all the latest technology, the IQ is currently the best car for my needs.

Now, my requirements when it comes to cars are very unlikely to be the same as someone else, so I wouldn’t dream about telling other people what car they should buy. It really is none of my business. So therefore I really hope that any comments on this video doesn’t degenerate into a slanging match, with people saying things like “this car is ****” and “you should have bought a ”. Unfortunately cars videos, much like Apple product reviews, have an unfortunate habit of bringing out the comment trolls.....so if you see anything like this, please ignore them and they'll go away.

iPad Macbook Air Style Keyboard Case

This was a big disappointment, I thought I was buying a fun gadget, but it tuned out I was really just buying a poor quality and overpriced iPad 2 keyboard case.

I've no doubt that some people will see this video and still want to buy one of these, but don't say that I didn't try to warn you.

I bought this from Dealextreme...here's a link to the product on their site. 

The £50 Roku LT

£50 is an interesting price-point for an electronic device. There are a lot of things I will take a punt on at £50 that I would never consider if they cost £75 or more. In my opinion the Roku LT is definitely worth £50.

It's obvious that streaming media is going to play a massive part in the future of home entertainment. It's still early days, but home cable and fibre are already capable of offering a significant proportion of houses with the necessary broadband speeds that can support HD streaming video.

We're still at the nascent stage of Internet video networks, and it reminds me of the early days of satellite TV. I got my first satellite dish in the late 1980s and back then it was a wild-west of wildly variable quality programming provided by channels that were often available for viewing outside their intended audience areas. It took a few years, but inevitably the big companies took over, locked the content down and ramped up the costs.

Internet TV is still in it's wild-west period, there is a lot of junk out there with a few diamonds hidden amongst it. You might end up watching adverts for products you can't even buy in your country and the video quality varies wildly.

For people that don't share my memories of the early days of satellite TV, there is another analogy that might better explain how I feel about the Roku..... I'd imagine that most people will, as a child, have listened to a radio under the bed sheets late at night, sometimes tuning it to foreign stations, It really felt like you were listening to something secret or special. That was a memory that came flooding back today when I was watching KeyTV, a channel that as far as I can tell is intended to promote Key West's restaurants and activities to vacationers. The Roku is in a way like a Shortwave radio for Internet video.

Now if you wanted to keep it simple you could always just use the Roku for its BBC iplayer function, its good enough to buy it just for that one channel/app but then you'd be missing out on a whole world of video.

If you want a box that works well today and gives you a window into the future of home entertainment you should pick up a Roku. I can think of many worse things to spend £50 on, and I've got a loft full of stuff to prove it.

Here's the review

By the way, the USB to Type M Barrel 5V DC power cable that I mentioned in the video is still in the post, but I'll let you know if my plan to power the Roku using the TV USB socket it a success when it arrives. An update will appear here.

Update 4 May 2012..... Well my USB Cable to Type M Barrel 5V DC power lead turned up in the post and.....disappointingly it doesn't fit into the socket on the back of the Roku. The outer barrel is the right size, it's just the centre pin on the Roku is too thick to fit in the hole in the middle, so that experiment is over. As a number of people have pointed out, it's very likely that the Roku would have needed to draw more power than the USB would supply anyway, but it would have been nice to actually verify this....ho hum.