What cell phone video cameras are good for
Frankly, I wasn’t that concerned with getting a video camera on my cell phone. The still camera was very important to me, but not the video camera. I’ve since realized how useful it is. I’ll tell you why:
My DVD-player was starting to act up, and finally the time came when it refused to read a DVD for the first time. It was time to take it back to the store under warranty. So, what to do. I figured I’d save the store some work, and document it myself. It would sometimes read a DVD, and sometimes not. I simply filmed the whole process from putting in the DVD, until it threw up a “no disc” message. The first time I did it, the player actually recognized the DVD, but some other things were funky. So I deleted the take and tried again, this time starting with the funky bits, then ejecting and re-inserting the DVD. And this time it didn’t recognize the same DVD.
When I got to the store, I showed the video (not very sharp, but sharp enough to see what was going on) to the clerk, and he asked me some pesky questions to see if it was user errors or not. My answers convinced him, and he sent it for repair or replacement.
But the point is, because I documented the error, he didn’t have to hook it up and turn it on, then try to mount a DVD. It saved him a lot of work, while giving me the assurance that he saw what I saw - who knows, if the player cooperated in the store and he was really annoying, he might say there’s nothing wrong with it? I’m guessing some documentation might help people with more timid personalities, because there’s no room for enterpretation if it’s an on again off again fault with a product?
I’ve used the still camera to document other malfunctions before with good results. But for this particular problem, a video camera was the only thing that would really prove it.