I borrowed a VIO POV 1.0 camera and hard-drive recorder to test at the weekend. Like all mini-cams it's difficult to get the horizon right. The built in screen and simple controls make it much easier to use than the mini-cam system we built for the DVD, Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown.
However, there was quite a lot of digital drop out, in the form of pixelated sections. I was warned about this by the camera owners who have found a problem in the past when trying to edit shots into TV programmes. I deliberately left some of the digital disturbance in the edit (below) to see if it would fail to upload, but it worked fine.
The VIO POV 1.5 is their newest model. It's widescreen but not HD. That means they're falling behind the competition, particularly the Contour HD. They'll have a waterproof case out soon.
What's the betting POV 2.0 will be VIO's HD version? When will it be out?
Michelle at VIO Customer Care told me: "as I'm sure you know, we are constantly in a state of development exploring cutting edge, state of the art technologies to build into our suite of products. Although features such as HD and stuff will be a great addition to our family of POV products the time-frame for release of such a product has yet to be determined."