{"id":398,"date":"2008-08-12T00:14:47","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T07:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewysz.com\/wyszdom\/?p=398"},"modified":"2025-05-27T15:47:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:47:18","slug":"why-i-am-unhappy-with-sony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/2008\/08\/why-i-am-unhappy-with-sony\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I am unhappy with Sony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a nice HD camera from Sony. It’s an HDR-HC3. It’s not cheap. I’ve had Sony cameras before, and I’m used to my camera having a standard mic input. I expect to see an 1\/8″ input (or better) on anything but the cheapest models. Well, here’s how the always proprietary Sony decided to ruin my experience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HDR-HC3 does not have a standard microphone input. It has an “Active Interface Shoe” (AIS), which is a type of input specific to Sony that allows the connection of accessories. So what are my microphone options when it comes to AIS? Well I have three: a shotgun-like “zoom” mic, which mixes with the internal mic based on zoom level, an omnidirectional “surround” mic, and a wireless Bluetooth mic. The Bluetooth mic sounds like a good idea, but take a look at it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\nImage by <\/em>Dai<\/em><\/span> <\/em>Haruki<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, that large thing that looks like a flash drive sitting next to the camera is the microphone. Sony expects people to wear<\/strong> this. I don’t know if they realized during development that a video camera accessory might be used with a video<\/strong> camera that is recording images<\/strong> of someone wearing the microphone. Because it is ugly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point Sony must have realized that people might want more than three options for microphones, as they did actually come up with the VMC-K100, an AIS to 1\/8″ mic input. Unfortunately, they discontinued the item, and I was unable to find any third-party alternatives. I did find accounts of some people that were so desperate for a solution, they bought one of the Sony mics and after some disassembling and soldering, created their own inputs. Not something I’m ready to get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After losing an eBay auction for one that went for over $120, I was finally able to find a retailer selling it using Google’s Product Search<\/a>. The seller had pretty mixed reviews and a poor website, so I’ll hold off on naming it until my order is complete. Feel free to email me<\/a> individually if you’re searching for this adapter and want to know where I found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now all I need to do is wait for the adapter to arrive, and then go out and buy a non-ugly wireless lavalier mic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ll leave you with a Google search tip, useful for when you’re searching for something specific like [ais] and you don’t want Google to try and help you out by returning variations like [ai]: Stick a + right before the word with no space in between. For example, [+ais mic adapter] (without the brackets) should help narrow down your results. Don’t worry about memorizing this tip, since you can always cheat<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough complaining; I’m off to go watch some meteors shower<\/a> down upon the Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update:<\/strong> The seller, NextTronics, emailed me this morning to say that the item was not available. A company which collects someone’s billing information before revealing that the item is out of stock does not deserve to be in business. Now I have to scramble for another solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a nice HD camera from Sony. It’s an HDR-HC3. It’s not cheap. I’ve had Sony cameras before, and I’m used to my camera having a standard mic input. I expect to see an 1\/8″ input (or better) on anything but the cheapest models. Well, here’s how the always proprietary Sony decided to ruin … Continue reading Why I am unhappy with Sony<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3330,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/3330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wysz.com\/wyszdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}