Accessories

Not bad, definitely well worth the price I paid.
First off, I want to say that the camera shoots pretty good footage outdoors, not at all superb quality, but passable for just archiving personal footage. Indoors is another story, out of the box the low-light conditions pretty much blacked out the playback.

After researching, and changing settings, with help from a review on a similar camera, the indoors picture is pretty good. With the lenses and filters I purchased for this it actually has it to a B-. What I did was set it to M mode, shutter speed to 1/30 and set it to cloudy. You can also gain up while in this mode for a brighter picture, but it does add some grain.

The hard drive is so easy and convenient. I didn't bother installing any of the included software because I use Sony Vegas to edit video. Sony Vegas doesn't recognize the MOD format the video files are saved in, so again I did a few minutes of research to find out that you can simple highlight the MOD part of the file name/extension, backspace 3 times and type MPG. This instantly converts it to MPG format, which Vegas and all of my other playback programs recognize.

Sound is great, for a built in speaker it was almost one of the best I've heard on a simple video camera. The lense comes with threads to attach wide-angle lenses, and filters to make the picture even better... all in a camera a little over 5 inches long!

I was really pleased with this camera, and recommend it to anyone who really needs a good camera, but nothing extravagant- for people who rarely use it. It takes a few minutes of tweaking to get it right indoors, but most cameras aren't cut and dry to begin with.

JVC Does Not Stand Behind Their Products - JVC Lemoncorder
I agree with the many other users who have experienced the "Condensation, Operation Paused" defect on their JVC GR-XXX. Despite numerous others reporting this problem, JVC says its not a recognized problem. I would disagree - it is a recognized problem, but its your problem, not theirs.

Love love LOVE it!
The 5 main reasons I purchased this camcorder:
1) Size. It's barely larger than a can of soda!!!
2) Hard drive. Nice not to not ever have to buy blank tapes or discs.
3) Ease of use. The controls are well designed. Had most everything figured out in no time.
4) Downloading to the computer is a breeze.
5) Reviews from other owners. Everyone seems to like it for the most part.

Very happy with my purchase!

Pretty good camera for trips, you need a better battery though
The quality is awesome, the ergonomics is just super (the four way stick in the LCD for starters), the transfer capabilities are nice (just plug it in to ANY PC and it becomes an external hard drive with video files, although you have to rename the .MOD to .MPG), and the zoom/frame rate is great. (Upto 32X optical and .5-4000 fps - this is really good for shooting as you like).

For those who complain about the grainy stuff, try changing the frame rate yourself - lower frame rate for poorer lighting condition (so that the poor lighting gets registered on the CCD more slowly but rigidly), or change the white balance. I have had very little lighting problems , and that too only when shooting at really bad lighting conditions (in night for eg)...

Other than that, the camera is perfect for trips; it's amazing to see that the product turns out to be as good and heavenly as it was advertised.. for the first time.

Some personal gripes (from the stand point of a HDD camcorder), are that you can't record from a video source directly :D, and that you need to wait for 4 seconds before you can start recording after switching it on (it shows the same JVC animation every time, possibly to warm up the HDD meanwhile), and that you need to recharge it often if you are shooting it with the provided battery. If you can add 90$ more the 4 hour battery will make this cam one of the best. Also the digital stills are like crap; I mean 640x480 stills, worse than the ones in the cell phones.

But the overall thing is that you can shoot the videos and then transfer and burn them to your DVDs.. the problem is, with such a camcorder you would want to shoot everything that moves and is colorful and waste the 20GB soon enough...

I have owned a JVC VCR way back, and it was pretty good too, and that made my judgement about a industry first HDD camcorder from JVC...

JVC Video Camera
When we received the camera, it had been previously used. We were initially given a run-around, but Amazon gave us a good discount on the camera that made us happy. They couldn't replace it with a new one. The camera seems to have a sharp picture and excellent sound. It is amazingly small. It seems like a great choice for general home video. The software is a little daunting. Follow directions very carefully. The freedom from tapes and discs is nice feature... will also run longer w/o interruption to change discs or tapes.