Having a DVD burner build-in to this camera saves a lot of time to transfer movies to your computer or simply save them in a secure media (DVD). 30 minutes of normal quality and 20 minutes of HD is more than enough for my home-made movies.

I purchased the HDR-UX1 to go along with a new HD television. I pondered what to do get HD content to my TV (DirectTV, Dish, or cable). This camera has produced the only HD content that my set has seen as of yet, and I love the picture.

The record time isn't really an issue for me because I shoot mostly scenery and such. However, if you want an HD camcorder for recording your kids basketball games or dance recitals, you should probably go with the HDD model. But if what you are shooting isn't really important in HD you can always shoot in SD for longer record time.

I have noticed that the built-in microphone picks up the sound of the dvd drive, and that could be a problem for things like interviews. I am probably going to go with a separate mic anyway, so again it doesn't really effect me.

Editing is a problem for now, but Sony Vegas is supposed to have an update in the spring to deal with the AVCHD format.

Over all it is a good camera, and to have the HD quality at $799 is totally worth it.

I bought a MacBook Pro computer specifically to edit my home videos, due to its ease of use and compatbility with a wide variety of cameras. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that while I can get stills from this camera onto my Mac, the video is incompatible! To even read the documentation on the included CD I had to borrow a PC. I don't know if a driver will ever be available to let me use the Mac with the videos from this camera.

As far as its quality as a video camera, the price is right and it is fine for my use, although heavy and with short recording time.

This sony cam is great for home use. Vidio quality is great. I highly recommend buying a HD cam.

I am a videophile, I love this product and just order a Ikelite underwater housing for $1100.00. I record hundreds of hour a year and the 27 minutes on a dual layer is good for me. The quality is the best out there right now for prosumer camera. Purchase a Blackmagic Design Intensity video card for $250.00 and you will be able to caputre right from the HDMI on the camera to a hard drive. Givivng you the abilty to edit your footage in HD with Sony Vegas or Adobe Premire.I use a 30 foot HDMI cable during shoots to capture to my external hard drives via my desktop and it works great. You wont be disapponited with your purchase if your looking to get in early for a good price on HD video.

But you do need a very fast PC for playback. A 3GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent simply won't cut it. I get jerky and poor video on my single core PC but the problem is fixed as soon as I move the video to my dual core AMD box. Keep in mind that the AVCHD playback software is so demanding that both CPUs are running at about 90% utilization during playback. The conclusion: there is no way a single CPU system can pull it off.

For people who complained about recording time and MAC incompability, those are design and technical limits. I am prefectly happy with 15 min of HD recording time per miniDVD. If you need longer recording time, you should buy a hard drive or miniDV based camcorder. Mac incompatible? Buy a PC. They cost less than Mac accesories.

Yeah, the DVD storage should be longer than 15 minute for HD recording. However, the price/quality of this camcorder more than make up for it. Plus i only do home movies so this fits my needs. I am rewarded by this unit everytime i hook this thing up to my HDTV.

I don't do a lot of low light recordings so i am not affected by a number of bad professional reviews in this area.

If you are shopping for a camcorder now, this is one of the best buys out there. I was looking for a camcorder for over 3 months and i finally settled on this one.

This is a very good camcorder with the main problem I noted being the DVD format giving only 30 minutes or so of recording in HD mode per disk. It is also a problem that only Blue-Ray DVD players can play back the DVD in HD mode. Even worse that it might destroy the disk if you use it on another player. Nevertheless, the price was good and I think Blue-Ray will be more affordable in the near future. Meanwhile, I can playback my video directly or send it to the computer. I am glad I bought it. If a MiniDV tape version were available at the same price now I think it might be better to stick with the tape version for now though. I was sent a bad power supply with the camcorder but Sony sent a new one right away. Be careful to buy the correct battery and external charger accessories for the camera as it is a bit confusing as to which will work for it. Overall - I am very happy with the camcorder.

The worst thing for this is, you have to bring a bench of disc with you and replace disc every 20 min if you are capturing HD video. I think most of buyers would take HD video if you buy a HD camcorder. But a small disc can only hold 20 min HD video, have to change disc time by time. The CMOS sensor is worse than CCD but it is the best sensor among CMOS in this price today. A lot of noise will come in low light condition! I bought it for $800 and return it. I think you'd better buy SR1 with a 30G hard drive. That would be a much better one!

I bought this camcorder few days back and this is one buy that iam not going to regret. In spite of some of the drawbacks, seeing yourself in HD gives you real high. The picture quality is awesome. Its like stack of 5-6 mega pixel images put together. I have infact paused the video at few places and taken screenshots of them.

Lack of video editing tools is a drawback. Sony provides tools to convert H.264 to Mpeg. So that I can use the Mpeg files on Sony Vegas. Audio quality is excellent. Great camcorder when shooting outdoors. Night time shooting needs improvement. Can spot lot of noise in the video when shooting in dark.

I would recommend to buy a RW disk and dump all its contents to your computer, then erase the DVD contents.

This is an awesome piece of equipment! This cam produces some of the most stunning video and right now the price has to be the deal of the decade! The dvd format is outstanding and it really is the best of both worlds. I use -rw discs and copy my video to my computer then reformat the disc (which takes about 7 seconds) and use it over and over again so the price of media is virtually nothing, unlike tape which you have to keep buying and buying. The other benefit is unlike a hard disk based cam I dont have to worry about the drive filling up while I'm on vacation with no place to offload the video. And unlike A tape based cam I dont have all the problems associated with tape like head cleaning and trying to dig out tape that is wrapped up inside the cam or having to endure hours of tedious capturing or having to properly tension a tape before use or how big of a box I need to store all those old tapes in or worrying about recording over something I have already shot. I could go on and on and on about it but tape is just an old unreliable pain in the rear. As you can tell I have had bad experiences with tape based cam's so enough of that.

The AVCHD codec is very efficient you will have about 4.5gb per hour of video compared to 13gb per hour of video from a tape based hdv cam and it records audio in dolby 5.1 surround which is alot better than the stereo only that you get with hdv.

Others have mentioned the short recording time and I suppose it may be an issue for someone but it is not for me. Think about it when you are watching tv or a movie how many times does the cam just sit there pointed at one thing without a break for longer than a minute (or even a few seconds)? There is nothing I can think of that I can record for more than 20 minutes (hq mode) straight that I would want to sit down and watch anyways. Now if you have to record something like a childs school play sure maybe a couple times in your childs life you need an hour shot but I dont and even if an event took say 1 hour straight it only takes 15 seconds to change out a disc and be recording again so in 1 hour I would change twice and miss 30 seconds of video, not a big deal. Most all the stuff I shoot is like 1-3 minutes tops and I'm on to the next scene. I have shot a wedding and I was able to get all of it from the time the bride walks in to the time the couple walks out all on 1 20 minute disc. I think most of the people that complain about short recording times are just to lazy to change a disc! As far as the video being noisy in low light well give me a break, it does but so does every other cam that is priced south of $3,500.00! Besides that they do make these things called lights! In the daylight there is no noise at all in the video when played back on my HDTV, just beautiful high def video.

The bottom line for me is that this cam is by far the best bang for the buck available today. Nothing in this price range even comes close to the video quality that this cam produces. It is a snap to record brilliant video and transfer it to the computer. Editing options are limited right now but they do exist and more are on the way so the editing thing is a non issue as well. It has pro type features that are just not found on other cams and I especially like the manual adjustment ring and I would never own a cam again that did not have at least a 3.5" lcd screen. Having used the smaller 2.7" screens before I can tell you that the big screen is way better especially when you are trying to manually adjust elements like focus and exposure. With the big screen you can actually tell what your video will look like, the small screens just dont show enough detail. This cam also takes beautiful still pictuers, I could keep going on and on but the truth is I really enjoy everthing that this cam has to offer and I would not trade it for anything else.

FANTASTIC camcorder!! Awesome stills and vids. Highly recommended for beginning user based on low price and ease of use!! Only tough part is converting video's. Still recommend to any user looking for HD quality!!

Solid construction, good optics, nice sound. As mentioned by others, the output for the USB transfer is found in the handycam console and not the camera itself...a minor annoyance. All in all, this is a good camera that is touch pricy but you do get what you pay for.....

A lot has already been said and there are some excellent reviews here (as well as elsewhere), but I just want to add my 2 cents. I purchased this guy a few months back, and have since purchased a light and a second battery for it (I'll talk about those shortly).
My favorite features include:
1. The 3.5" screen, which should be a must for ANY camcorder, as the 2.5" screens common today are worthless IMHO.
2. The sliding door for accessing the HDMI port as well as the other video ports. This is unique to Sony's UX1 and SR1 HD Camcorders (as far as I can tell) and is the BEST implementation I have seen to cover and uncover ports. Much better than the little plastic plugs that inevitably break-off and are lost.
3. Beautiful, detailed video.

My least favorite features include:
1. The stupid little plastic cover plug for the power port. As mentioned above, this camera has a great sliding door for all its video plugs. Inexplicably, Sony used the plastic plug for the power port, which is right next to the video ports and could have used the sliding door. Stupid. Mine is already threatening to break.
2. Short recording times. It is hard to blame Sony for the short recording time on DVDs. This is just a fact of life and the short time isn't limited to the HD DVD camcorders but it problematic for all DVD camcorders (though less so than here). You make a choice and you live with it. While lots of the reviews mention the dual layer DVDs out there, they are MUCH more expensive and I don't even really consider them an option. Luckily, the lower quality modes still look very good, especially when taping outside. For lower light situations, I would use the higher quality settings. Still, all of the video I take with this thing looks better than any standard def. stuff you may see. Also, related to the DVD issue is that the camera insists on popping up a little comment saying it recommends Sony brand DVDs every time I put in any other brand. This is completely annoying and Sony should rethink the way they try to lock you in to their own brand.
3. Automatic lens cover. Not having to bother with a cover is a great little addition to this thing.

Features I thought I wanted but could have lived without:
I haven't yet used the focus ring or the mic in or headphone out yet. I really wanted these, but in retrospect, they were unnecessary for my home use. The mic on this thing is plenty good, and I just don't want to mess with the focus at the end of the day.

Other notes:
I purchased a light and an extra battery here on Amazon and couldn't be happier with them. The light is the Sony HVL-HL1 and the battery is the same one that comes with the camera, the Sony NPFM50. The light is just right to give a boost to indoor recording and makes the picture MUCH better in low light situations. It's only 3 watts but seems VERY bright. It attaches to the hot shoe on the top of the camera. It's priced right and works flawlessly.
As for the grainy picture mentioned by many reviews, I haven't noticed anything distracting. Every camera has positive and negative aspects, but I am more than happy with the quality of video this thing takes.
I give this Camcorder 5 stars not because it is perfect, but if you weigh the price and the features, I'm not sure there is a better HD or SD camera out there right now. It would not be worth the list price, but at the price they have it for now, you simply can't beat it, as long as you can live with the DVD format. If that is a dealbreaker for you (it wasn't for me, obviously), it's a dealbreaker, but otherwise, this is by far the best buy at this price point.

Bottom line, the picture quality that you get is incredible on the standard HQ setting. You can go two levels higher(just higher bitrates) but you shorten your recording time to 20 minutes or 15 minutes depending on which you select. If you have a ps3 ,you can just pop the disk in and watch it on your high def tv. The Dolby Digital recording is excellent as well. I recorded a Disney show at Epcot and the sound was just like you were there. I couldn't be happier with this camera but it may be a challenge for those who are beginners with high def equipment. It also records in standard dvd format if you choose. Nice feature but if that's all you are using it for then you will want to go with a dvd camcorder which is much less money.If you have an external hard drive on your ps3 than you can copy the m2ts files from the stream folder on the dvd and just play them directly from the ps3 when you want. The ps3 downmixes from Dolby Digital to stereo which I hope can be fixed by one of their many firmware updates. If you do purchase this camera then go with the MiniDV-RW media as you can just copy to a standard dvd via the sofware included and then use your MiniDV-rw over many times.The stills are just ok but then again I am used to the Canon S2-IS which really does a great job. You have the options of 4mp,3mp widescreen,or 2mp screen capture during video recording. All seem to do a pretty good job.

Picked up one of these about a year after it's release and at a substantial savings vs. when it was first released. Looked at it's replacements the ux5 and ux7 and decided that this model probably fit in between them as the ux5 seemed to have lost features and the ux7 gained. As the price was far cheaper then either, I decided to take the plunge.

Pros:

Very solidly made. This may be a con if you are looking for something light as it is fairly heavy, but the solid feel I think is nice.

Shoots great SD footage and HD footage converts to SD with the included software. Far better picture then the entry and mid level SD camcorders. Nice if you are going to be sending something to someone else, who may not be set up to view the disks in their native format.

In the proper light the HD footage is very nice. Not broadcast quality nice, but still much better then SD footage. Both my parents remarked seperately on how clear the picture was when they first saw it playing on a HD set.

Large 3.5" screen.

Can be edited somewhat with included software, but is very basic.

A hotshoe for adding a light.

Straight to DVD can be nice if you have the means to play the new format (ie blu-ray player or very powerful computer)

Sound is very clear. I'm not an audiophile, but even I noticed the crystal clear sound and lack of any internal noise when I played back my recordings.

Cons:

Digital image stabilizer good but not great, optical would have been nicer.

You need a very fast processor (duo core). I have a P4 3.0ghz, seperate video card, with 2mb of ram and it cannot handle the format well at all. The ram is not the limiting factor, but the processor is. In checking my system utilities, my CPU is maxed out at 100%, with only about 400MB of ram being used. Hence I am getting dropped frames in playback. Also if you wish to take advantage of the DL disks (DVD+R DL's only) you need a DVD drive capable of reading DL disks, which again would limit a lot of computers over 1 1/2 - 2 years old.

Indoor shots full of noticeable noise. Again outdoor well lit video is very nice. Indoors is still nicer then SD, but the noise is noticeable. I'm adding the sony light that goes on the hotshoe which should help.

For the price this is offered at now, It shoots as nice an SD picture as the SD only camcorders priced at or above this model. That you pick up HD is a nice bonus, and in the right conditions you can get great video and audio.