PDWHD1500 doesn't support 35mb/s!
 

I just finished a two camera shoot yesterday along side a PDW F700. When we went to feed using a PDWHD1500 it wouldn't play the disk from my F350. I had to use my camera instead.

Is this going to be resolved by Sony, or will the F350 be made obsolete?

In the past Sony has been good about backward compatibility, hopefully they will continue protect their customers who supported them in the early days of XDCamHD.

As far as I understood Sonys update policy, within the next months both cameras and decks will be capable of all XDCAM HD compression formats , but not for now.

(720p just was implemented for example).

Regards

ULI

I knew about the limitations with the cameras, but not about the decks. It was a shock when my disk wasn't supported.

This is a pain, as it will likely take some time after the firmware updates are released for them to filter through to all the machines out there, making it uncertain whether 35mb/s disks will play for new clients.

I find this very strange - backwards compatability has always been something Sony have been pretty good at, current HD and Digibeta decks playing original non-SP Betacam tapes, for example.

Looking at the specs page, it seems that it certainly SHOULD support the 35Mbs HD mode, as well as the 25Mbs and 18Mbs SP and LP modes (and all the other SD XDCAM modes as well) - see Sony : PDW-HD1500 (PDWHD1500) : Technical Specifications : United Kingdom

Here we are (just spoke to a Sony Broadcast person):

Every HD422 unit (camera, decks) support XDCAM HD playback 18/25/35 (recording: 25/35mbit, no long play) when updated to firmware version 1.2 (since november 08).

Units shipped AFTER november (incl. 1.2) have a print "/1" ("PDW-HD1500/1") on the shipping box.

Its a good idea to inform your customers , if they missed to update their units.

Regards

ULI