Vivitar 690 HD Underwater Pocket Video Camera

Vivitar 690 HD Unerwater camcorder

Vivitar is introducing the 690 HD, a waterproof pocket HD camcorder (up to 10 feet) that features a 4x digital zoom. For only $59.99, you will be able to shoot 720p AVI (M-JPEG) movies at 25 fps and store it on the SD card, you will need 1 GB for each 6 minutes of recording. The 690 HD can capture VGA(640×480) and  QVGA(320×240) video at 30 fps as well, and it comes in many different colors including black (photo).

Other features include a 2.0” TFT LCD display, a built-in microphone and speaker, a LED light, a TV-out connector (but no HDMI), a built-in lithium-ion battery and a USB 2.0 connector for easy upload to Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Picasa Albums, Photobucket, Youtube and more…

The M-JPEG (Motion JPEG) video format offers slightly better quality than M-PEG 4 but requires more storage space on the SD card, for this reason it is currently rarely used by camera manufacturers. The format is supported by Youtube.
For this great price point the features are good enough to make fun videos during vacations, for comparison, the Kodak PlaySport Zx5 costs $179.95 and offers full HD video capture at 30 fps or 720p at 60 fps in MPEG-4, in addition of waterproof the Zx5 is shock resistant and dust proof. In MPEG-4, the Kodak camcorder stores 20 min. per 1 GB at 720p HD @ 30 fps on the SD/SDHC card.