Rich Fiscus
4 Jun 2008 11:56
San Francisco's Pure Digital is introducing a new addition to their line of digital camcorders today. The ultra-compact Flip Video and Flip Ultra models have already been a big success thanks to equally compact prices of just $129 and $149 respectively. Their newest model, the Flip Mino, has a slightly higher price at $179, but an even smaller footprint, measuring just 3.94" x 1.97" x 0.63" compared to 4.17" x 2.16" x 1.25" for the Flip Ultra.
Besides boasting an even smaller size, the Mino adds an internal Lithium-Ion battery which is supposed to be good for 4 hours of use between charges. Both previous models use 2 AA batteries, with an estimated battery life of just 2 hours for typical alkalines.
Like the Flip Video and Ultra, the Mino includes software which allows video to be uploaded directly to YouTube or AOL Video after being transferred to a computer via USB cable. It also adds a similar capability for MySpace.
All of Pure Digital's camcorders encode video in MPEG-4 ASP format, which is the same standard that popular codecs like DivX and XviD are based on. At 640x480 the resolution is slightly lower than most standard definition digital camcorders, but also unlike most consumer models the video files produced are progressive rather than interlaced.