G73 - Lousy Camera

Is anyone here disappointed with the camera in the G73... it seams really lousy, slow frame-rate, even though it says 2 megapixel it seems to be a really large image that is massively pixelated, so it looks like a 320x240 image just stretched out with software until it's 2 megapixel sized

I mean I didn't expect perfection, but I did at least expect to be able to record a SD youtube video or use skype reasonably well, but I had a webcam on my Pentium 1 166 running windows 95 that responded smoothly and had a clearer picture than this thing... the camera in my Acer Aspire One beats the crap out of this camera... so yeah, is this normal, or is mine broken?

 

dunno, I turned mine off in BIOS.

 

I did too. *flutters eyelashes*

I use an external Logitech camera and have only used/checked the G73's built-in camera on the very first day of use. Haven't turned it on since, but from what I remember, I agree that it sucks monkey nuts and then some.

 

Do you have the Best Buy model? The regular G73 has a nice camera, but the BB version has a crappy one.

 

I bought mine off ebay... I'd say from that comment it probably is a BB version or something similar, we don't have BB in Australia, and I bought it from an Australian Seller, but who knows where he got it from.

Good to know that there were 2 different possible camera's though... I wonder if I could upgrade the camera at all

I would disable it, but I am lazy and I use it to detect my face and log me in

 

What model number is on the stickers?

 

In defense of the G73 I do not think I have ever seen a quality camera on a laptop, they are there for a convenience aspect more than a quality aspect.

I mean its stuffed in a lid of a a laptop that is about 1/5" thick when a real webcam is about the size of a small mouse that you would hook to your desktop.

 

I beg to differ on the size vs camera ability... mobile phones have far less room and can record 720p full speed video

As for serial numbers

MODEL: G73J
MB ver.:G73JH ID:1A
####################
G73JH-RBBX05

let me guess RBBX05 = Retail Best Buy version 5 ?

 

make sure there is no clear plastic over the camera lens.

 

Rbbx05... There's yer problem. Normal G73 webcams are prety decent honestly. You are right though, my cell phone has a 5Mp camera with flash. Lol.

 

I have A2 version and my camera died on me second day. Never bothered me to much though.

 

Never seen any quality 720p from a phone. Even my 720 HD Vado a dedicated pocket device for 720p video is not super great and only about on par with a 720p desktop camera.

The iphone4 is supposed to be pretty good video I have seen tests and it was decent but also your paying a lot more for that camera than the portion of a laptops cost that goes into the camera, the G73 is still the cheapest high performance notebook out there and they put the money where it counts (gpu, cpu, ram, hdds)

 

And even then Asus couldn't get those parts right either. Not the GPU anyway.

 

The 5870 is the best mobile gpu on the market even now with the 480m I still think its better.

So I guess you mean that not because of performance but due to "problems" but that seems to be subjective because some of us (me included) have no problems at all. So they did get it right just not everybody has it right

 

Heh even with BTOTech and other resellers flatly saying the issues with G73 GPU is less than 1% they have sold, there will always be those who believe G73 GPU is failure in general.
- Remember when we first got our G73s, it seemed the RMA was in the double digit %? Now it seems it's about 10 per 1,000 sold. Seems you and I are among the vast vast majority of happy G73 owners. BTW among those 10, a few just returned because they didn't like it, not due to any defects

Curious Vicious, you plan on upgrading to the next notebook next year when another notebook is released with 6xxx series with possibly Sandy Bridge? Only saying ATi since I don't think Nvidia will be replacing the 480M any time soon.

Thought you might be as I saw on twitter you are itching to build a new desktop and you seem to upgrade notebooks frequently, maybe the itch has moved to notebooks also?

 

Well, this was mostly a thread I started just to confirm weather it was broken or not, which seems to indicate that it is working fine, it's just crap.

I have no other problems with the G73, works great, has never hardlocked, runs any drivers I want to put on it

Device Manager lists it as a 1.3... but the thing is, now I guess the thread will get complainy.

I have a 1.3megapixel USB webcam from MSI, that I picked up for $10 about 4 years ago now, and it's not really that big, apart from the lenses, you could easily fit the entire thing in a laptop screen bezel, most of the size is the extra led backlight it has, microphone and a l larger manual focus it has on it, which could be redesigned if it was for a laptop, regardless of the picture quality, it still gives a good frame rate.

How cheap does a camera have to be, to not be able to support a smooth 20 to 25 fps... at 320x240... I mean really... even the most basic webcams can support s smooth framerate, and it certainly wouldn't be the CPU, RAM or GPU holding the camera back... $1 more, per unit spent on the webcam I guess would have made all the difference.

And yes I know it's the cheapest laptop on the market with these kinds of core specifications, but the camera in this is like a spit in the face.

I feel it's unacceptable, especially with the abundance of cheap hardware in this day and age to have a webcam that provides jerky low fps video. God forbid you want video larger than 320x240 because then your looking at about 1 fps.

Does anyone know where I can get a good camera from the other model to put into mine?

 

So far the G73 is holding out fine for me. I may upgrade if another laptop comes out that has something that makes me want to upgrade. Not just a gpu and cpu upgrade it has to look good and feel good like the G73 also.

I really do want to build a new desktop but its a budget limitation :/

I am like 2 years behind building my windows home server too, finally you can get 2TB hdds for $100 though.

 

Overall pretty satisfied with mine also, but the cake would be a proper vBios. Had to RMA mine due to keyboard lights and vBios.

Anyways I'll be receiving practically a new notebook soon. The replaced the motherboard, GPU, LCD, keyboard and the top chasis (with touchpad). I'm a bit confused why they didn't just send a replacement at this point lols.

 

For something like a video call through skype, i think the built in camera is more than enough.

 

My guess that's all it was intended for. C'mon it's a camera fixed to a screen, it's not meant for anything else.

 

It is not enough, even for that, the camera I have in my G73 is worthless.

Oh well... naught to be done now

 

I have the Best Buy model and my camera is nice and smooth. The framerate is much better than what I've seen on any of my previous laptops.

If you test the camera in Skype, you may notice like I noticed an Asus virtual camera and 2nd "official" webcam. The virtual camera (of course it uses the same camera) seems smoother to me.

 

Strange.

The Best Buy units DO have lower grade cameras. It's a fact. Maybe you've had bad cameras? Or you got a really sweet unit.

Very strange indeed.

 

I also have the Asus virtual camera show up in Skype. I did the opposite, I felt the non-virtual was smoother, but I'll test again.

I only found the camera 'slow" when using it to log in. (forgot the name of the asus app) I would have to hold still for 10 seconds or more! by then I could have typed my password 10 times! So I unistalled.

For other uses the camera is far from top of the line but works well.

 

dc84, download virtual dub and it will work just fine. I had the same issue you stated.

 

Virtual dub huh... what does that do?

 

I have the X3 model - from newegg..
i see that initially when i use skype the camera is OK..but say after 30 sec it freezes and moves like 2-3fps..

are these signs of lousy camera? how is urs working?

for best use i turn off downlds in my dlnwd manager but still its dies on me.

any help to get the best from camera?

and yeah i did try to use asus virual camera and kind a - sucked big time..