consumer hd where is it going

[Robert Mann Z.]

when the road map to dv arrived the future became clear, the cameras would get smaller, lower cost, and more consumer freindly. A small segment would become bigger have a higher price and become less consumer friendly (xl1, vx series)

the hd road map seems to play out the same way, sony got started with the introduction of the semi pro hdv camera and a smaller consumer "friend-like" version of a cmos hdv cam...i suspect that canon will introduce a glhd cam and soon afterwords some optura hdv cameras...sharp will follow along with jvc...

i imagine all consumer cams will be 1080i, and be able to exchange tapes from camera to camera with no playback issues..."i imagine" this because regular joe would freak if his sons soccor games from his canon hdv could no be played back in his new sony hdv...

i also imagine that one company will need to make a choice...and so the basis of my post..what will pansonic do for a consumer looking to get high def video collection started...they are not part of the hdv family

no mini tape can handle dvcprohd, and p2 is way out of the price range of regular joe (or me for that matter)...

what do you guys think?

i believe that panasonic will move away from tape for good, instead follow its sister company jvc and put out an mpeg4 flavor of a consumer hd cam, prehaps maybe a blueray cam...

that will piss off a lot of folks who may want to take stab at editing...i know sony will come out with a bluray cam for consumers, they have one for the pros already...maybe a mini blu ray disc base cam...

or maybe they break down and join the hdv clan..

[Michael Wisniewski]

I think the practical replacement for tape is a low cost swappable hard drive. Drop the tape mechanism, and put in a 3.5" hard drive slot.

If either Canon's H1 or Panasonic's HVX-200 had included a 3.5" hard drive slot, it would have blown the competition out of the water - not mention significantly dropping the cost of owning the HVX-200.

40GB drives are currently US$40-$50. I bet they can make 20GB HDs for US$10.00-$20.00, if they put their minds to it. That would make it competitive with tape, and a lot more user friendly. Plus, if you have money, you can use larger drives - a win-win situation.

I know solid state media like the P2 is cool and all that, but we could have had low cost swappable drives yesterday, at prices competitive with tape.

Anyway, that's what I'd love to see on the camcorder roadmap for the near future.

[Mark Utley]

I completely agree, Michael. Hard drives have unlimited potential, so long as they're reliable and don't cost too much.

[Jack Zhang]

And we're still waiting for a new storage media capable of uncompressed 1080p60... tsk, tsk, tsk.

[Michael Wisniewski]

I think HDV is the new S-VHS. It's mainly of interest to people on the acquisition side.

Consumer's on the other hand, are ultimately concerned with a robust and easy to use delivery method, and I don't think HD in any form readily falls into this consumer category: VHS, DVD, CD, iPods, or video on demand. . (yah, I know, thanks Captain obvious).

So I think the real "next wave" will be something that's easy to plug and play. Perhaps something like inexpensive solid state memory cards, but that's a way off.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Michael Wisniewski

Consumer's on the other hand, are ultimately concerned with a robust and easy to use delivery method, and I don't think HD in any form readily falls into this consumer category: VHS, DVD, CD, iPods, or video on demand...

On the other hand, one could argue that HDV is a better consumer format than DV because it should soon be possible to deliver HDV as is on blue-laser DVDs. In case you didn't catch it, blue-laser players will support MPEG2 video at HDV bit rates.

[Robert Mann Z.]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

... soon be possible to deliver HDV as is on blue-laser DVDs. .

once you put those bits onto any thing else but minidv tape its no longer hdv as per the spec...but hey who is counting these days, is anyone following the spec?

i of course think that bluray will be the way the masses get to record hd of there kids...flash memory is still so much...too much to use an archieve medium

[David Kennett]

Just to add a few observations.

Hard drives ARE fragile in camcorder applications. I read where the JVCs detect when they've been dropped - and shut down the hard drive before they hit.

Interlaced scanning is for CRTs - all other displays are progressive. CRTs will disappear - so will interlaced. 1080p is OK though! I know! It's just my take - we'll just have to wait and see.

HDV is just an inexpensive HD acquisition format taking advantage of inexpensive DV tapes. Distribution is another matter - and new ways are appearing all the time. Recently "Lawrence of Arabia" became available on demand in high definition - and for free - on Comcast.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

On the other hand, one could argue that HDV is a better consumer format than DV because it should soon be possible to deliver HDV as is on blue-laser DVDs. In case you didn't catch it, blue-laser players will support MPEG2 video at HDV bit rates.

DV isn't really a consumer delivery format, it's an acquisition format. DVD is the consumer delivery format, after that it's Quicktime and Windows Media Files.

As for consumers switching to blue-laser DVDs - that's the same argument that was used for VHS to S-VHS, and it never became a dominant consumer delivery format, it stayed mostly on the acquisition side.

The majority of consumers won't switch just because it's higher resolution, there need to be more convenient features, plus higher resolution, to get the majority of consumers to jump on-board.


I'm excited about all the new "affordable" HD/HDV cams for acquisition, but I think consumer HD delivery is going to languish for a long while before we see anything significant.