We told you about VholdR at TC40 and I got my grubby mitts on a Beta the other week. I’m extremely excited for this to hit the market in the coming months and while it’s geared towards the active community, just about anyone can use it. You don’t have to be an extreme athlete to own or even want one. The unit itself is super lightweight, under a pound, I think. It’s small and pretty easy to use. There’s an on/off switch under the backing that holds the microSD card (up to 2GB) and a separate external button starts and stops the video recording. What’s neat about the VholdR is that you can mount it horizontally or vertically and turn the lens so that it shoots in the direction you have it set. There are two lasers that are used to level the lens and then you’re good to go. If the glass cover is scratched or broken you can get it replaced without fear of the lens being FUBAR. What sets this apart from the, say, FlipCam is that it eliminates the ‘digital shake’ you experience from certain video cameras. You know, the visible lag that occurs when you move the camera quickly. There’s a bit more so keep reading.

The VholdR isn’t just hardware. They want to change the way you shoot video and upload onto the Net. Everything is optimized for the VholdR site so you don’t have to worry about reformatting video and making sure YouTube or Revver can handle it. It’s all pretty seamless and the demo of the site I saw was very intuitive. So why would you want this? Let’s say you’re a ski bum and want to check out a particular run that your friends told you about at some resort or whatever. Jump onto the VholdR site and do a quick search for that resort and that particular run. Bam! Now you know what to expect. See where this is going? Good. Look for a full review next month where I’ll be shooting from the ocean and atop a motorcycle. Crazy!

VholdR