The long awaited GoPro HD HERO was on display at Interbike, and the multiple TV monitors around their booth had some very luscious video running. I got to speak with a whole slew of GoPro people, and I even had a long conversation with the man himself, founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman. Nick is a really great guy, and he is very psyched about their new product. GoPro spent a lot of R&D time on the HD HERO, and they not only worked on the video, but also on the audio, to help keep down wind noise when riding at Mach 10.

It was very sweet to hold the new camera in my hands and play around with it. The camera is just slightly larger than its predecessor, and uses the same old mounting hardware, except the new housing is obviously larger to accommodate the new camera. The camera looks almost exactly the same, with the same small screen, LED light and 2 buttons. The small screen still has its information upside down as you progress through its settings using the buttons.

What is hugely different is that you can now shoot HD with the HERO. You can shoot in 1080p (widescreen) at 30fps, 960p (full frame) at 30fps, and 720p at either 30 fps or 60 fps. The 60 fps allows slow motion, how cool is that! The camera angle is different in each format, so 1080p is 127 degrees, while 920p and 720p are at 170 degrees. And hold on to your horses, memory is now up to a 32GB capacity!

Read the rest of this entry »

GoPro had their Hero video camera on display at the back of the Interbike show. It was quite the interactive and audio visual display back there with their staff modeling the different versions of the camera and on screen footage showing the camera in action.

The Hero camera system is a 5 megapixel sensor that can shoot 56 minutes of video and 5MP of photos using a 2GB SD card (not included). It is self contained in a small waterproof polycarbonate housing and weighs a mere 4.7 ounces. It uses 2 AAA batteries and comes with 16MB of internal storage.

(continued…)