Tough Decisions...

[Steve Whitlow]

I was practically settled on the HV10, even with its limitations...until recently. Now, I've had my hands on the Panasonic AG-HSC1U and I've read the announcements of the JVC HD Everio GZ-HD7. To top it off, the HV20 is shipping as of this week.

What is a newbie to do? The digital workflow is important. I've read very little of the Pana and a Mac workflow, does any current Mac editing program allow for the AVCHD format? The JVC looks like it's the one to beat feature wise (at a higher cost) but I'm not sure if its picture quality compares to the HV10/20. How does 3 CCD versus CMOS fit into all this?

So, can any of the resident experts weigh in on a 4 way match between these 4 cameras as of late March 07'?

[Pieter Jongerius]

Hi Steve, those are a lot of questions. Let me pick one: AVCHD. Me personally I don't consider that because of the picture quality, which is inferior to HDV (as long as they keep the bitrate as low as it is, I believe it is 8mbit now, while the standard theoretically supports much higher).

(ah well also a thought on the 3CCD thing: you may seem to get higher color resolution but the native resolution of the separate CCDs in the JVC is roughly halve that of the CMOS chip so you end up with a loss I guess)

So for me, it's between the HV20 and the HC7.

Hey I've now discovered (where have I been) camcorder.info has a review on the latter: http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...der-Review.htm

Edit: okay, read the review. I'm with the HV20 because of 25p and (tata) low light performance. See also http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...Conclusion.htm

[Steve Whitlow]

Originally Posted by Pieter Jongerius

Hi Steve, those are a lot of questions. Let me pick one: AVCHD. Me personally I don't consider that because of the picture quality, which is inferior to HDV (as long as they keep the bitrate as low as it is, I believe it is 8mbit now, while the standard theoretically supports much higher).

(ah well also a thought on the 3CCD thing: you may seem to get higher color resolution but the native resolution of the separate CCDs in the JVC is roughly halve that of the CMOS chip so you end up with a loss I guess)

So for me, it's between the HV20 and the HC7.

Hey I've now discovered (where have I been) camcorder.info has a review on the latter: http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...der-Review.htm

Edit: okay, read the review. I'm with the HV20 because of 25p and (tata) low light performance. See also http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...Conclusion.htm

Thank you for the input. I was able to get my hands on an HC5 for the weekend. While it's a nice a camera, I can definitely see that the picture doesn't fare as well as the HV10, imo. I'm not too sure about the HC7, I'll have to read more on that. I think i'm really starting to lean towards the HV20. At that price, with its reviews and feature set, I don't see how I can go wrong.