Anything Under The Sun - autsun.com

Anything Under The Sun and the link is
www.autsun.com

A new online shopping site based in New Delhi, India. My film maker friend Dev Benegal, who's from Delhi, but spent a larger part of his life in Mumbai, recently pointed it out to me.

Autsun.com, have a rather nice variety of things. I've checked out only the computer and electronics portion, but that is growing. That's because, what makes this site different is that if you don't see what you want, you can recommend it along with a preferred price. And they try to get it and offer it for your price.

I wanted to see a Canon HV-20 - fast becoming a cult camcorder in the indie film circuit - so I recommended it. And they now have it. Available in India, free shipping anywhere in India, the Canon HV-20 for just Indian Rupees 70,000.00.

A lot of people will Google the HV-20 and come across prices like US$ 800, even 750. But hey, that's for the NTSC version. The PAL version is US$ 1200 at least and that's before taxes. Add Indian Customs Duty and it gets to 70k anyway.

Earlier, my friend Dev recommended autsun.com a Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition 1 Tb hard disk, and they now have it there. 1 Tb for under Rs 16,000 or so. Great for video editing and backups. It has Firewire 800, USB, eSATA and is small.

Autsun also sell iMacs, MacBooks and other such.

Another interesting item is the Sony HC 96 camcorder. autsun.com is the only place I've come accross this camcorder. No Croma, no Sony showroom, no Vijay Sales. No one has the HC 96.

What's special about the Sony HC 96 is that it is the only DV camcorder left that has DV in and out. The other models like the HC 36, 26, 38, 28 whatever, all have analog out, DV out, but no DV in. And no analog in DV out. What's called 'analog in, DV-passthrough'.

And since the HC-96 is a Sony it will play back miniDV and DVCam tapes. Canon, Panasonic, and JVC will not play back DVCam. So if you need a good capture deck for DV/DVCam for film editing, and have the ability to capture live from a analog source into your MacBook on location (like a video assist) then the HC 96 is the only current camcorder that can do it. And as far as I can tell, only autsun has it.

I just realized that don't know these guys from Adam (or Eve) and have not yet bought anything from them, but I'm still recommending them. So please speak to them, do your research, and make your own choices.