Originally Posted by
ItsJustMe
One thing to consider: Professionals use the GoPro. Watch a few shows on Discovery or BBC - Mythbusters is a good example. They must buy GoPro cameras by the case. It may be that they like them because of the range of mounting options, but first and foremost they have to have excellent video quality before anything else.
I check any shows sponsors to find out if there is an advertising affiliation that is being served. Take Oprah, she used to give away things every year for Christmas, turns out it was a hour of her handing out Christmas gifts from her advertisers/sponsors. I know she didn't have to do it, but imagine the goodwill created from it. Those sponsors made their money back ten fold from those gestures just during the holiday season and they were the big names like Sony and so on.
GoPro & Contour are the big names in sports/action cams like these I guess, so naturally they're going to be the equipment that is featured. The items off ebay, like the ACT20, that's an economical & inexpensive Chinese alternative. It barely has the firmware for the camera as support. GoPro & Contour, they are more towards the Canon & Nikon company's of these type of products, they have a product line of several similar cameras that are more full featured products (things like gps & bluetooth built in), a website and most often provide download for firmware and even have video editing software for product support. Anyway, with the ACT20, they rely on video software editing programs from 3rd party software companies. Which is fine, there are plenty that edit AVI files. Plenty of free conversion programs from 1 format to the next. We all have to go the extra to do elegant things for any product we buy.
More side by side:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5v36v2zpqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGXPKHbOm7o
Wow, in the latter video, the Oregon ATC9K looks like better quality ?