Lets say I make movies on an XL1s for the next 5 years, do you really think that people will care if it's HD or not?

Depends on where you want to sell them, which also means how much money you will get for them.

Okay, I'll bite. I only 2 weeks ago FINALLY bought a nice 43" Sony HDTV. I brought it home hoping to be amazed, which after 15 years in TV, I was skeptical that I would be. Well...I'm amazed. I'm overwhelmed at how good it is. It's funny that I didn't get this way at the stores.

I think that the reason that HDTV is moving slowly is because the retailers are doing a poor job at showing just how good it is. They have their prerecorded programs on a million tv's and many times they look like crap. I went to about 6 places last week to shop and 5 of them had SD signals going into them. (SD, by the way, looks even worse on an HDTV set than a regular set.)

Anyways, until you get an HDTV in your living room and watch shows that you are used to (Leno, Conan, HBO shows, any HD Sports), you will be in the dark on how good it looks.

So, will people care if you make your movies SD? Well, if the story is amazing, they won't care at all. But, if you want it to look really good, I'd be thinking HD in the next 2 years. Just my $.02...don't spend it all in once place.

Kevin

I agree with Dylan, it depends on your target audience. Personally, if it's me, no.

I never thought HD was a big deal...until I saw it. ;)

The real answer is dependent on the context of your question.

Will clients care if you're shooting HD within the next 5 years? I'd guess so. If you're shooting for yourself, and you don't care, than keep having fun in SD.

With Sony's cheaper HDV cams on the way, I think clients are going to start demanding some kind of HD master within 2 years or so. After that HD likely go pretty mainstream.

I wouldn't expect to be shooting with the XL1S for more than 18-24 months.

Even, this is all assuming that you buy a camera, which makes me think thaat you are thinking in terms of zero budget productions.

The fact is that with some sort of budget for your production, even a very small one, you should be able to hire in a HD camera such as the new HVX. If you hired an HVX200 with some P2 cards once the footage is transferred to your hard drives you do not need any extra decks or transfer equipment.

At the present time if you hire a HD camera such as an F900 etc you have to contend with ye olde offline edit processes and hell knows what else. The HVX200 will be an exceptional rental camera.

So at the end of the day Even, do not worry about things such as high def. If a client is paying you, and wants high def, rent the camera. Then if you are bringing in enough money you can consider buying one.

Lastly, yes, high def is important. Exceptionally important. It looks amazing, and because it reproduces the mid detail frequencies exceptionally well it actually holds better detail overall than film.

I'd rather have progressive shooting (than HD) and in a consumer price tag. :)