Suggested SD Card

jordandov said:
care to elaborate?
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No, if I understood it, I'd have called it by its proper name. I think its some sort of windows speed booster that uses flash. Seems to mess up cards- but I think what it really does is format them with a proprietary filesystem and then the customer takes the card out and doesn't reformat it and thinks its dead.

D.R. Gates said:
Yep. With what we're using the Panny's for, we can't have a 10% card failure rate.
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IF you want to spend more money to feel better, then that's your choice-- there are a lot of businesses built on selling people that very thing.

But the idea that these other cards have a %10 failure rate is absurd. People are, probably, an order of magnitude more likely to write a review if they have a problem, and even of those people, when I've looked at them, half of them didn't have a card failure (the other half it was hard to tell.)

I'm not aware of any non-anecdotal evidence that a transcend, A-data or other inexpensive card has a higher failure rate than a more expensive card. And Kingston, which is a name brand, and has been around for a long time with a good reputation, sells their cards for a lot less than SanDisk. (While I believe the actual cards kingston are selling are made by sandisk.)

The difference is kinda amazing. The Sandisk Extreme III 16GB card is $133 on newegg. While the Kingston SDHC class 4 is $33. Since my camera doesn't come close to the bandwidth rated in Class 4, I wouldn't make any extra use of the theoretical extra bandiwdth of the kingston card. And yet it costs $100 more, and I really don't think its more reliable, even if I'm wrong and they aren't literally the same card underneath the label.

I won't tell you you're wrong to pay for a label, but don't tell others they are playing with fire for not doing so.

IF that's not the impression you meant to give then I apologize.
 
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But the idea that these other cards have a %10 failure rate is absurd. People are, probably, an order of magnitude more likely to write a review if they have a problem, and even of those people, when I've looked at them, half of them didn't have a card failure (the other half it was hard to tell.)
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You're right; people are probably more likely to write a review if they have a problem. And using Amazon's reviews to judge a product's quality is hardly scientific. So, what percent of the satisfied customers don't write reviews? Let's say it's 50%. Therefore, 1500 customers are satisfied while 80 are not. Is 5% failure acceptable?

I have a cousin-in-law who is an actuarial. Perhaps he can give us proper odds. Oh, and PM me if you're interested in purchasing life insurance. :)
 
From what I can tell after reading this entire thread, best bang for the buck is the Transcend. Get four of them for the price of one Panasonic branded 16gb. Buy one Panasonic card.

I'd be surprised if anyone on dvxuser ever reports a failed SDHC card in general. I've never heard of one failing unless it was run over by a car. I've heard of people dropping them in toilets and still working.

I'm just glad we have a camera like the HMC150 and cheap media.
 
Actual failure rate due to defect in the card, is probably on the order of about 1 in 5 million. There really isn't much room for manufacturing error, and this technology is really well established. I mean, what could break? The semiconductors are tested at the factory, there's no delicate wires, the connectors are robust.

How exactly is it that y'all think these things fail?

I can think of numerous ways for users to become confused and believe they have failed, but I'm not aware of any step in the manufacturing process that would cause failure and not be caught long before the card left the factory.

Its not like this is exactly cutting edge technology or assembled by human hands.
 
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You must remember that if I had the same items with 3 different labels, sold to 3 different markets, at 3 different prices, chances are, the low priced item would encounter more complaints form it's USERS.

Class 6 is a standard, that use to be difficult to obtain.
Most manufactures who could do it, would seem to be the ones with the technology lead over others who could not.

Transcend has been making class 6 cards about as soon or better than the others.
I have tried them in my 2 cameras, plus two canon cameras and in the Sony EX1, and have had no failures...not one.

I would say the Sony EX1 would be the most demaning camera as it actually uses more bandwidth than the HMC150. Many have failed that test, but the transcend passes.

That would suggest to me that it is the best card for the money, or at any price.

If you want to spend more, than fine by me.

In many cases, if you are getting failures, it may be due to your port or reader you are trying to read from.

That is why transcend also sells the cards with their own reader (in some cases) to eliminate that as a problem, and to insure the fastest transfers.
 
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Oh, I figured out how SDHC cards can "Fail". People put them in their older card readers that support only SD, and not SDHC and don't realize they are a different standard. When the reader fails to read them, they decide that the SDHC card "failed".
 
So I just purchased two 16GB panasonic sdhc cards yesterday and now I'm thinking perhaps I spent a lot of unnecessary money. Are the transcends equally good cards? And is the extra price just paying for the panasonic name?
 
keentave don't regret your purchase, if you could afford it then thats fine, because your still getting a quality product.
 
Personally, I would've ditched the Panasonic card for the SanDisk. The Ultra III's speed is higher and it cost less.
 
wisted said:
I'd be surprised if anyone on dvxuser ever reports a failed SDHC card in general.
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And that's just it. Using SDHC for the type of video that the 150 can output is relatively new. Most reviews, good or bad, deal with the cards in point-n-shoots and DSLR's. It will take time to determine a consensus with how they handle the much more rigirous task of HD video over long periods.
 
keentave said:
So I just purchased two 16GB panasonic sdhc cards yesterday and now I'm thinking perhaps I spent a lot of unnecessary money. Are the transcends equally good cards? And is the extra price just paying for the panasonic name?
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Don't regret your purchase! If you do... sell them to me! I'd gladly take them!

Hahaha!

Seriously the Panny cards are probably a pretty safe bet. At $89 they're pretty affordable too! I think you made the right choice.
 
i got my hmc150 two days ago and with transcend class 6 sdhc card 16gb i can record in ph 21mbs - no problems , i got it only 2 days but i am positive that this is (21mb - not 30 , as you say D.R.Gates) the fastest one can record on hmc150 , and as much i can remember avchd tops at 24mbs/s at its spec. , so any class 6 card will do fine - and there is no 100% card (any card can break) :)
 
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keentave said:
Are the transcends equally good cards?
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Thing is, we really have no way to compare "Good" across brands. The only differentiator is the claimed speed.

D.R. Gates said:
It will take time to determine a consensus with how they handle the much more rigirous task of HD video over long periods.
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I use class 4 cards and have been recording at 12Mbps for over a year without ever any trouble. I don't do hours of shots, but I shoot long enough to be writing continuously to the card for several minutes at a time (Eg: I know the card can handle the bandwidth)

Course, class four is 32Mbps, and I'm not coming close to that. But I bet that if your camera captures at 24Mbps, you could get by with a class 4 card, let alone a class 6 card, or one that allegedly does 160Mbps.
 
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Just bought 2 16gb ocz cards. From what I found, the 16gb transcend cards (class 6) record at 10MB/sec (at 70x) And like Mark said, the ocz cards record at 150x. Can't say i really know what the 150x means when compared to MB, but it is a higher number compared to 70x =)
 
Hi Nantnee

From a chart I saw at Tiger Direct, 66x is 10 mbps, 133x is 20 mbps. So based on those number 150x is only slightly faster than 20 mbps.

Brad Cook, future new member here, found another brand of SDHC cards that are rated at 150x and are in the same price range as the OCZ Gold cards. Here is a link to the best price I could find.

Delkin 150x
 
Mark Von Lanken said:
Hi Nantnee

From a chart I saw at Tiger Direct, 66x is 10 mbps, 133x is 20 mbps. So based on those number 150x is only slightly faster than 20 mbps.

Brad Cook, future new member here, found another brand of SDHC cards that are rated at 150x and are in the same price range as the OCZ Gold cards. Here is a link to the best price I could find.

Delkin 150x
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From a rookie's perspective, I think one thing that some people (including myself admittedly at first) were confused with is MBps and Mbps. Bytes and bits.

The 150 only records at max bitrates of 21-24Mbps which very easily falls under Class 4 cards (caps at 32Mbps) which the manual states. The new JVC GY-HM100U records as high as 35Mbps and won't take anything less than class 6. I'm sure most of you know this already, but maybe somebody doesn't.

As taken from wikipedia:

"SDHC cards will often also advertise a maximum speed (such as 133x or 150x) in addition to this minimum Speed Class Rating. See section speeds above for a further explanation. One critical difference between the Speed Class and the maximum speed ratings is the ability of the host device to query the SD card for the speed class and determine the best location to store data that meets the performance required. "Maximum speed" ratings are quoted by the manufacturers but unverified by any independent evaluation process."

I don't really think the max speed rate (150x) really means anything to Panasonic when they developed the camera. Class 4 and class 6 both work.
Take care.
 
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