Looking at how much image processing is going on it’s either not very sensitive (it was early morning, from memory it does look a bit better in decent sunlight) and/or it’s a 720p sensor at best with a lot of up-scaling.
Why they don’t use decent sensors is beyond me - but laptop webcams seem to have the same design mentality.
I think it has to do with a) price, b) physical size, c) heat generation, and d) power consumption. And there is a lot of compression going on so as to get a long record time on an SD card.
Also with dashcams (apart from the need to read numberplates) for most people image quality is less of a priority I think - the aim is to show which car ran into you not give a detailed image of every stone in the pavement.
That said the 4K Viofo dashcam (I think it’s an A229 Pro) that the guy on the London Dashcam YouTube channel uses seems to give very clear 4K footage.
So does mine, with the same Sony chip. Night time is where it really counts, lesser cams barely get enough detail and if a driver speeds away you have not much to go on.
Perhaps but the audi UTR is a) premium phone price range b) much less constrained size-wise than a phone d) powered from the car’s 12V so plenty of power is available.
I will concede c) as it (the camera) gets pretty warm even at this time of year and sun on the windscreen will probably heat it more so there’s probably an issue with thermal noise from the sensor but given the quality of camera systems they can squeeze into the much more size, power, heat and price constrained environment of a phone.
The downloaded videos are at a bitrate of 23Mb/s, I don’t think that’s the issue. It will be hardware compression anyway.
I’ll try to pull some stills from a sequence which was in better light, for comparison.
Have others noticed an ‘autobahn’ approach to driving this year. We were passed multiple times by cars travelling about 40 to 50 mph faster than the 85mph/133kph I had set on cruise control. I’ve not noticed such big speed differences in the past.
We got a new one the other week, about 2kms up the road from us, but a few days later it had disappeared. Made enquiries and found it had been shot up on its first night out.
I bought a dashcam for our trips to France and specifically when we are travelling between Caen and the Lot or trips further south. Within 46 we rarely meet what you might call ‘traffic’. Heavenly
I remember a stretch of road in the Herault carved into the cliff face with blind bends. We just hoped for good luck there wouldn’t be a speedy French driver hurtling around said bends in our direction.
I get the impression many fail to anticipate anything going wrong - ie encountering an oncoming car in that particular case, but more generally of course hence tailgating and and dodgy overtaking. Is it in the genes?
The thing that baffles me is the people who drive in the rain with no lights on. They can see everybody else but nobody can see them. Perhaps they think an invisibility cloak is a real thing…
Its the same at dusk. I get the impression that because their dashboard is illuminated they think their headlights are also on as was the case years ago with our old cars.
In France if you have an accident on a country road specifically it seems the lazy insurance companies go knock 4 knock so both parties loose and both insurers win. My dash cam footage of the yoof in his beemer that didnt move over at all from the centre of the road saved me my no claims bonus, £650 increased premium. I have front and rear cameras and no guessing why the rear camera could be useful in France
Mine too, it recorded the lorry with 3-way nationality which forced me off the road in the mountains. I got back every penny including the franchise.
The grey area I presume is because it is supposed to be illegal in France to photo people in public without permission but I have never heard of a prosecution for dashcam footage and there is plenty of mine out there on YT. It is possible that a house mounted security camera might transgress if it can see outside of your property.
