Digital Trends

Gateway DV-S20 October 29th, 2003 | by Jeff Fila

Image Quality

The DV-S20, which is also called the "Pocket Multi-Cam", uses a CMOS image sensor. Most high-quality digital imaging products today use a CCD image sensor, but CMOS is becoming more mainstream. CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) image sensors have been around for about 30 years, and are capable of very high quality digital images. CMOS (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) is a much newer technology and until recently, offered much lower quality images.

There are benefits of a CMOS lens however, which make the DV-S20 possible. CMOS sensors can use up to 1/10 as much power as CCDs making them better for battery powered devices. They also cost less to produce. CMOS also incorporates on-chip circuitry for additional processing (such as JPEG compression) which results in lower power usage and a smaller form-factor. The CMOS sensor is what allows the DV-S20 to be so small and relatively inexpensive, however at a trade-off of image quality.

There are three quality settings each for video or still picture mode. An icon represents what quality option is selected: one star for the lowest quality, two stars for medium quality and three stars for the highest quality. There wasn't much, if any, difference between the high and medium settings for still images. Image size and quality were very similar on both.

At the highest settings, still image quality was excellent under proper lighting conditions. Unfortunately, these conditions can sometimes be hard to find. Bright rooms or outdoors during daylight provided the best results. Even with the built in flash, images can be too dark and muted without good light. The flash is an added bonus, but does not include a red-eye reduction feature, which was noticeable in some shots. There is no manual focusing option, so you'll have to get used to how the lens focuses to get the best shots.

Video Quality

The DV-S20 stores videos in the MPEG-4 format at 320x240 and at 22 to 25 fps. This is the Microsoft .asf (Advanced Systems Format) file format which is a true streaming video file. You won't get DVD quality videos out of it, but you will be able to easily share the videos you capture. The .asf file format was developed specifically for streaming across the internet. It compresses on-the-fly for small file sizes and has the ability to start remote playback almost instantaneously. In fact, even users on dialup can view streaming video in this format without much lag. This makes the Gateway DV-S20 ideal for sharing images and video over the internet with friends and family.

As with the still images, the amount of light available determines how well your videos come out. If you aren't outside in the sun or in a well lit room, your videos will be dark and the colors will be off. Shots with a lot of movement or action tend to be a bit choppy also, but the better the lighting; the better they come out too.

In our opinion, the image and video quality with the lower settings weren't worth using. We'd suggest that you use the highest settings when possible.

Image and Video Size and Transfer

Images and Video are transferred to a PC with the included USB cable. It would have been nice for it to be USB 2.0, but in order to keep the price under $200, USB 1.1 was used. Transfers aren't bad with USB 1.1 if you are using only the onboard 64mb of storage, but if you were to use a 512mb smart media card, it would be very time consuming.

We were able to transfer an almost full onboard storage (62.5mb) of images and video in 3 minutes and 16 seconds. In numerous tests of similar amounts of data, it stayed around 3:15. For 512mb of data, that equates to over 26 minutes of transfer time.

Gateway estimates that you can fit 91 images at the highest quality setting (Super Fine) on the internal 64mb memory. Our tests showed an average of closer to 140 images without any video. That seems to be plenty of storage for still images, but when you add video into the mix, you start running out of room quickly. Gateway estimates about 5 minutes of video can be stored in the internal memory at the "Super Fine" setting and our tests agree with that. With the highest quality video and still images at the same time, you'll want to add more storage if you are going to be taking much video. Keep in mind though, with 3 minutes of "Super Fine" video, you still have room for 20 or 30 pictures.