$29.95 one-time-use video cameras ready

$29.95 one-time-use video cameras ready
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
The first one-time-use video camera goes on sale this week at CVS drugstores in the Northeast.

The makers of the $29.95 camera and CVS hope the device will do for video what one-time-use cameras did for film sales: dramatically increase the market. "The one-time-use camera revolutionized the film market," says Grant Pill, director of photography for CVS, the nation's No. 1 drugstore chain. "We see the same thing happening with video." Sales of one-time-use cameras — a favorite cheap accessory for vacations, events and school trips reached 218
million units last year, from 43 million in 1994, even as film sales tumbled in the digital era. (Related: Digital hybrids do double duty) The new camera, from San Francisco-based start-up Pure Digital Technologies, doesn't use videotape. It saves images to internal memory — like the video mode of a digital camera. It goes chainwide at CVS stores at the end of the month and will expand to other retailers in midsummer. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, video
should be worth a million," says Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan. His company has marketed a digital one-time-use still camera since 2003. In video, Pure Digital "could have a real good opportunity," NPD analyst Ross Rubin says. "Twenty minutes of footage isn't a lot, but it's enough to capture a kid blowing out a birthday candle, or highlights from
a graduation." Consumers will have to pay an additional $12.95 for processing the 20 minutes of footage onto DVDs. There's no other way to watch — the camera can't be plugged into a TV.
Viewing functions are also limited: Only the last clip recorded can be seen on the back of the camera. Chris Chute, an analyst with market research firm IDC, says the camcorder is a device that gets used "a lot less" than others, usually just on special occasions. And many people never bother to show off footage they've shot with family and friends, because editing or transferring to DVDs is too time consuming. By comparison, plopping a finished DVD from CVS into a TV or PC for viewing is easy, Kaplan says. Customers can also transfer the DVD video clips to the Internet, for free. Very few online photo-sharing sites now accept video sharing, and the ones that do charge annual fees of $30 to $60. Kaplan wouldn't say how much it costs Pure Digital to make the camera. Chute estimates production costs at about $35. "They lose money on the initial sale, and make it on the second turn," Chute says. Pure Digital's still cameras get recycled about five times on average.