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Creative Ships $79 WebCam 3

Latest videocam features better-quality images, USB interface.

By Stan Miastkowski, PCWorld   

Creative Technology, formerly Creative Labs, introduced the third incarnation of its WebCam PC video camera this week. Officially dubbed the Video Blaster WebCam 3, the unit sports a new-look charcoal finish, higher resolution and is now standard with a USB interface. Both parallel and USB were available in the earlier models.

WebCam 3 retails for $79 and is on sale now.

The unit has a new CMOS sensor that captures still frames at 640 by 480 with 16.7 million colors, three times the resolution of prior WebCams. A snapshot button for instant still captures is also new. The WebCam 3 generates full-motion,30 frames per second, video at 352 by 288 resolution and 15 frame-per-second video at 640 by 480.

The WebCam 3 requires Windows 98. It doesn't work with the limited USB capabilities of Windows 95 OSR 2 and at least a 200-MHz CPU for best performance. You'll also need a sound card and microphone if you want to try video conferencing.

Software includes WebCam control for capturing both still images and live video. A new storage feature lets you keep albums of both still images and video files. The WebCam Monitor lets you feed full-time video to a Web site, or use the camera's motion-sensing ability to record suspicious activity at your PC.

Also included is Arcsoft's Polaroid PhotoMAX Custom Edition, a suite of still-image tools for capturing, editing, retouching, and sending digital photos via email. Rounding out the software selection are Microsoft NetMeeting, Internet Explorer 5.0 and a library of sample HTML and Web graphic templates for setting up a Website with video.