Durability Testing
since the saturn seems to be getting slated as being a good idea for getting footage of more dangerous situations. list off the more dangerous situations you may have put yours through. please list any negative reactions and such you got as well. i'll start: First, sitting in a best buy parking lot with a couple buddies eating arby's last night, there were some trees. i was going off on how cool the cam is and how it could be used in dangerous conditions, so i decided to -*test*-('") it. i followed proper scientific method :lol: and threw the recording camcorder into the largest tree in the parking lot about 15-20ft. when it was finished bouncing around and landed in the bushes, i retreived it. the screen had gone white, and i had to remove a battery to get it off, no response from the buttons. that video was lost (possibly because the power was cut before the camcorder wrote an end to the video file?) i put the battery back in and the camera still worked. So i tried again, threw it into the tree about 12ft and when it landed in the bush it was fine and still recording, much to my surprise. Next, we decided to try some fast food tray drifting. we've had some fast food trays for a while and since one of my friends has a car with front wheel drive, we roll the back tires onto the trays, lock the e-brake, and it allows the back tires to slide around. we used one camcorder from the point of view of the bystanders, and one was taped to the front of the car with electrical tape. we spun around for about 720 degrees, and decided to promptly leave the parking lot. since the camera was still recording, i said to leave it on and see what it'd get. the trip back was about 5 miles. the batteries were almost dead, so the camera died before we got more than about 100yards out of the parking lot, but when i popped in a fresh set of AA's, it had saved the video. so the camcorder held up well to the vibration and wind stress. i had also held it out the car window earlier in the day. the camcorder seems to autoadjust the volume level. we could be talking whe i pull the cam back in the window and it would take a few sec before it started picking up our voices. i think it was doing this because it had adjusted the audio way down while being put through the wind. we've also played hot potato with it, no damage or lost footage yet. though footage of blurs then someone's palm or the floor are not the best in the world.... yes we did drop it more than once. also, i had one time while -*test*-('")ing the camcorder connected to the computer where it was left on for a few min unattended, and the screen turned to what can be described as the red TV static, and the noise from TV static as well. i unplugged it, it stayed on with the red static, and i removed the battery quickly to get it to turn off. it ran fine once i restarted it and is still working. the only reason i can come up with for this was either the camcorder bugged out when it wanted to go off from its timeout and couldn't for the pc connection, or my cable (a chopped up centronics connector at the moment) wiggled enough to short some pins. that was the only time that's happened though. so so far the only errors either or my cams has had is a white screen from falling too far (something jarring on impact maybe?) and a what looked like tv static in red, and the noise to accompany it. so how have you guys put your cams in mortal peril?

i've dropped it a few times from about 3 ft onto a hardwood floor and it still works great. i just got it yesterday so i dont want to do anything to crazy with it...yet

i have yet to do this, but the camcorder comes in a form fitting plastic cover you can get out of the original packaging without damaging it. i was thinking as soon as i opened it that someone could put some plastic on the back, seal the whole unit with hot glue or something, and use it as a sub-aquatic camcorder. as long as the seal holds, i don't see any reason it wouldn't work.

waterproof camera bag
I purchased a Drypack camera bag for my camcorder. Did not take it down too deep yet, but worked great, and did not blur the video at all. Saw some on ebay at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7168213572&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT I purchased mine at www.overtons.com

carpespasm, check out binaryweaver's underwater howto in the pv2 section... great minds think alike!

durability
My cam has survived a few close encounters: I've made a series of movies by throwing the camera straight up into the air as high as I can. Quite a few times, I've not been able to catch it. So thats say 5-10 drops from 25 feet onto grass. No damage was observed and video was fine. Another incident involving a failed parachute resulted in a free fall of about 8 feet onto concrete. The case was a little banged up by this but it kept recording. I've also tried taking it underwater by putting it in a ziplock bag. This works well so long as your bag isn't cloudy. Have fun, -DC

well, just got done riding my 4wheeler through some trails, i can say the camcorders can take a pretty good punishment of being smacked by low branches now :lol: . the only thing was the fast motion of the trails going by and the motion of my head, it looks kinda jittery, but that's to be expected. not too bad to see what's going on though.

What to use it for ...
I obtained my CVS camcorder (well, actually 3 of them now) with the sole purpose of flying them in rockets (not the Estes stuff down at Hobby Lobby, but high-powered stuff that's 4 inches in diameter and lofts to 5000 feet). While I have not yet flown one (I only got the hacks working yesterday), I have been present while others have flown them. One, about three weeks ago, was accelerating under power when the model approached Mach 1 and shredded. The payload section with the camera seperated, tumbled, and free-fell from about 2300 feet, landing in pasture. The camera was retrieved, and playback was immediate. It appeared to continue working normally. How's that for "hardy"?

Did it record it's own death fall? That's a surviver I'd like to see posted.

Actually, yes, it recorded all the way up and down, and afterwards, when it had been recovered, the owner was replaying it for anybody who wanted to watch. I don't know if the file was saved, as at that time it was still necessary to take the camera to CVS to get it transferred.

This camera seems to be more durable than a rawhide chew toy. My 6 month old lab puppy with a crushing grip of death was unable to destroy this camera. Its scratched up pretty bad, but it works! Why can't HP make a camera that survives a 2 foot drop onto a hardwood floor? $30 > $450!

well, these cameras actually have some pretty substantial parts in them.if they were sold under a normal business model, i would expect them to be at least 120 bucks. i'd imagine they have to recycle these things a few times before they start seeing a profit on them.

I cold glue the camera to one of my Lego RC cars. 1st video didnt come out, when it tiped over it frooze and didnt save the video. 2nd Run (when the camcorder was disconected from the RC car is located here (15 secs) http://www.malatorymods.com/CVS-Cam/Movie_006.avi

well, there's an abandoned radio tower near my house today. trees have grown up around it for some time and i decided to climb into it and get some footage. climbed about 35ft up on it. and got some video. then, just to see how it would handle it (and to see the footage) i dropped the camcorder into a tree below. it made it through fine, and even landed facing up, so it recorded as i climbed down.