Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59211 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: JVC
• Model: GR-D340EK
• Released on: 2006-08-20
• Dimensions: 2.56 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
High-Band Digital Video Camera

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

A delight to use
When my Sony Camcorder ended its life I thought it would be difficult to replace and yet at half the price this item proves to be a more than adequate replacement and it's half the size and weight too.
The manual for any camcorder is frightening - so much complex detail - will I ever learn? No bother with this camcorder - just switch to auto and nothing could be simpler to use and get great results from. Before ending up with this item I bought a Canon model which was about £[...] dearer. I returned this unit since the picture quality was awful and at that stage I thought that might be the best the mini-DV format could provide. No way - this JVC Camcorder gives excellent quality and it quickly adapts to changing lighting conditions.
Flicking away from "Auto" to "Manual" there are a wide variety of features you can use to get top quality shots in more difficult circumstances. Taking them one at a time they are easy enough to master.
Ths snapshot feature is a bit disappointing since it does not operate in the 16:9 format mode. Surely everyone has a widescreen TV these days.
My only other criticism is the cost of replacement batteries - close to £[...] - a bit of a rip off I think. I tried a supposedly replacement battery at a much cheaper price off Ebay - it looked the same but kept coming up with the message "communication error" when used. It had to go back. The battery supplied gives about 75 minutes of use and recharges in about 90 minutes so it is not too much of a problem not having a spare.
I used Pinnacle software to download, edit and produce DVD discs in formats to suit PC and DV player. Great results were achieved with very little bother and I am no computer wiz kid.
This unit may not suit the pro but for mere mortals, like me, it is about as good as I want and I am called a "Grumpy Old Man" by my darling wife.

Do not buy JVC products - your wasting your money
We purchased this unit in summer 2006 from Amazon, no problems there.
The reason for this purchase was because our previous JVC unit GR-D70EK(at that time was only 2 years old) developed a major fault and was unuseable. Put it down to hard labour it endured from us and we were about to go on holiday and needed a working camcorder, so we bought a new one. Big mistake buying JVC again.

The Pro's
This camcorder is great for filming and taking pictures (it could do with higher mega pixels to be honest) but we got we paid for and this camcorder did everything we wanted.
Its lightweight dinky and nice to look at.
The Zoom is great and sound quality very good.

The Con's
No matter what we do you can not download the footage or pictures onto our pc which was the primary reason for us buying this camcorder.

Firstly a fire wire is not supplied with the camera and the instructions are very cagey about pointing this out.
Once purchased and installed, we followed the instructions carefully and began our first editing session with no apparant problems. Until we decided to the carry out further editing sessions and our pc would not recognise the camcorder. Ran diagnostics test on pc, no problems, purchased another fire wire in case that was damaged, nothing.
So we looked on JVC technical website to get some advice and found that there was a product recall on our first camcorder beacuse of the major fault we had already experienced.
We reported this to JVC and they agreed to repair the first camcorder. We mentioned the problems editing with the newer camcorder and they agreed to investigate this also. Both cameras were sent away for inspection and repair.
We received both back and whilst the older camcorders major fault has been rectified and we could use the unit again, the newer camera still did not respond to the DV fire wire.

The moral of the story don't do what we did and purchase two camcorders from JVC. Do your research on user forums. We didn't when we purchased these units and came unstuck.

Looked on leading traders websites to see the going rate for these used camcorders, they are not selling. They can not be given away. We have lost over £600. Not happy

Great fun to use.
This is my first camcorder and still is to this day. It is stylish, easy to use and is very small and lightweight to. It has great recording quality and it takes great photos aswell, but the battery could be better though. I do enjoy playing back by videos, who needs to download them on the computer when you can play it back on your TV? Don't listen to the people who critisize because this camcorder is a joy to use and you don't need anything flashy because this is what I call a work of art from JVC.