Latest Geek

Reader Feedback

5 Responses to “Microsoft LifeCam Cinema”

• 

  David H says:

  May 11, 2010 at 8:48 pm

  Ordered the web cam one day and the price was cut $5 the next day. Amazon refused to refund the difference (unlike Best Buy and other competitive stores). Found for $49 at Fry’s. Going to buy there and return this one if it ever arrives. Last Amazon purchase.
  Rating: 1 / 5
• 

  Gary M. Watson says:

  May 11, 2010 at 11:19 pm

  I bought this camera so I could record internal training videos for my team, but it’s an embarassment. There’s no way that I would send out this captured video – it looks like the junk video one gets from an old mobile phone. Any motion results in horrible smear, and even on my brand new dual core Dell E6400 laptop the HD capture mode is almost unusable. If I wanted to lug around a dual quadcore server just to capture video, I’d be MUCH better off spending my money on any consumer video camera and hooking it up via firewire. In fact, my junky 10 year old Sony camcorder hooked up via the firewire port on the Dell looks ten times better at SD than any mode I’ve tried on this LifeCam gadget. The sound doesn’t sync well with the picture at high resolutions, either.

  I guess maybe this thing is better than the free camera that’s built into the Dell laptop, but not by much and certainly not worth the expense. When they said HD video, I assumed that one could actually move around while shooting, but apparently not. How was this thing ever released from Microsoft’s QA labs? Do I need to hook up a $15,000 Dell R710 with a $30,000 RAID system in order to capture HD? (I’m actually going to try that next week to see if that’s the problem…)
  Rating: 2 / 5
• 

  W. trahan says:

  May 12, 2010 at 1:07 am

  Ms did not take time to make sure this product they represent works with all their operating systems including all updates ,drivers, op systems, to include all lap top and desk top computers.diffident drivers for laps /desktop. operation systems with sp3 has lots of problems installing drivers .this is the first cam I had with so much trouble to install drivers ,the cam still do not work for something this simple. ms should have done their homework on this issue but instead drive their customers away way with no answers , answers come from people having problems like me with still no answers on how to fix driver problems . but instead send you to a web site to buy 3rd party software to update drivers, well all my drivers is up to date and works fine with logtic and a few more, this tells me ms product is the problem not my drivers. matter of fact ini file is bad, old software and even on their download web site is bad .2000/xp win 7 sp2 sp1 may work with not sp3 for a cam this price you would expect it to work flawlessly but a 16.00 cam from local wal mart store works better . wow don’t look at price these days all maybe junk .
  Rating: 1 / 5
• 

  Jen says:

  May 12, 2010 at 2:48 am

  I cannot write a review about the quality of the webcam because I never got the software fully loaded on my system without it crashing (and of course getting that annoying popup wanting to notify microsoft of issue)! I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software 3 times before finally throwing in the towel. Definitely not worth the $$$ I spent in purchasing the webcam. I didn’t bother contacting tech support because if I can’t get it installed correctly without it crashing lord knows how the actual camera would work after software installed correctly. don’t waste your money. If i could rate it a zero i would!
  Rating: 1 / 5
• 

  Archie Bell says:

  May 12, 2010 at 4:14 am

  Stay away from this until they fix the software. It would not go into HD mode, there are yellow upside down yield signs with exlcamation marks next to the highest three resolutions, including HD. When I tried anyway, it gave a message saying that my computer wasn’t able to handle that resolution – but I’m way past the minumum specs that they give (I have 3.4GHz, 4GB RAM, XP Service Pack 3). On the next try it said “there is no camera connected to this computer”, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it found it again. It did go into HD after two or three tries. The focus swims in and out, and continues to do so, it’s enough to make one seasick. I tried to use the software update feature from the camera’s dashboard, but it says that I must be connected to the internet for it to work – huh? So I went to Microsoft’s web site and downloaded the software again but it hasn’t helped much if at all. Sometimes when you turn the camera off, the blue “on air” light stays on anyway. I tried to chat with Microsoft support, but you need a Product ID in order to chat with them – their software that was suppossed to detect the Product ID didn’t work, so I tried to manually enter every number I could find on the package, none of them worked. So I have a camera that doesn’t work well, with buggy software, that the apparently PC-unsavvy manufacturer needs to fix, and they won’t even chat with me. For now this is going in the closet and the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 (which works with no issues) is going back on my desk.
  Rating: 1 / 5