UK Magazines give the Sanyo 5 stars !
 

The december issue of T3 is comparing 5 tapeless camcorders (JVC Harddisk, Samsung, Sony and another one) and some of them get 4 stars but our beloved OLED Sanyo gets 5 stars! They're very excited about it's price. Use it only in sunlight, they say though.

A couple of months ago STUFF magazine gave it 5 stars as well.

Obviously it didn't die before the end of the review.

I would not give it 5 stars, it seems to be best handled by a professional that nuts things out, but less then desirable for professional work (I don't think that professionals' holiday camera was their prime market they were after). I have seen some descent footage (compared to HDTV transmission at least) but also less footage. 5 stars when you know how to film with it in bright light. If they could maintain that optimal quality compared to HDTV, under high contrast conditions (high latitude/multislope), lowlight down to 5 lux (higher SN, larger aperture, large bit rate 18mb/s+) and higher movement (higher bit rate) then it would truly be a remarkable camera for consumers and point and shoot professional work.

Needless to say, I might buy one, out of lack of suitable higher end alternatives until the Pana AVC-Intra next year. When I find out what is happening with the H264 Samsung and Panasonic cameras, any progressive camera, any Foveon X3 based camera (their is a cheap 3 color layer alternative to this sensor also I have been in contact with) the next Sanyo camera (please Sanyo contact me for a wish list that would make your camera very recommended by professionals and hobbyist, I have a demonstrated interest in camera designs through our digital cinema camera projects) or the Elphel HD camera project. I don't know why I am still interested in Sanyo after all this, just something about it.

http://www.t3.co.uk/reviews/imaging/..._hd1_camcorder

Seems like they gave HD1 3 stars back in July. Does T3 give relative review rating depending on categorization?

I think it's still a very attractive camera. It's just the term HD brings in too big of expectation for everyone :)

I have done a careful examination of the cameras picture performance, and I think they could have doubled the performance in problem areas easily. Biggest problem is noise, even in bright scenes, and interpolation problems (fly-screening) (but I am wondering if soft picture sharpening gets rid of it). Noise is not very compressible and downgrades codec performance. Sensitivity is low (noise again) and aperture is not as fast as would be good) so low light and noise is a problem. I would like to know if these problems were better in the HD1?

The way the codec works produces problems. On plain/bland areas, it downgrades resolution until blocking is seen. Background areas, out of focus regions, and movement seem to suffer from this. For example, people complain about background scenery being a bland, and waves being blocky, it is likely the aforementioned problem. This saves oodles of compression space, but the coarseness of the resolution is not good. By adjusting the codec to take into account the shape of these bland areas, and shaped features within (including the gradual toning of shapes and light within areas) a good compromise would be within reach for maybe double the compression space of blocks, but still saving heaps of space. This should be possible under the present Mpeg4 standard.


The rest I can't remember, but I have written stuff in the forum, and at the www.hd1a.com forum. I don't trust these sorts of scores, relevant maybe to good shooting conditions and other things.

Call me crazy, but I LIKE the noise. To me it gives the footage a more film-like quality. And I've seen some pretty nice lowlight footage as well. I think it just depends on how much care you take to understand the camera.

I'm definitely getting one.