CMOS vs. CCD: Required Reading
 

Check this out. An excellent paper:

http://hdtv.videotechnology.com/HDTV-CMOSvsCCD.htm

An interesting read, Chris. I knew it was only a matter of time.

-gb-

This articale was written by Rockwell, which since span off their Altasens division. They been trying for while make their CMOS sensors but are still not up to speed, are not able supply their sensors in quantity. Only Sony is able supply CMOS for video cameras in quantity right now. You can learn more about this if you follow Alternative Imaging Forum, where guys are trying make their own cameras, with Altasens sensor, which was to be used also in Ikegami and JVC cameras.

Radek

Radek,

As far as I know the new 1/3inch Altasens sensors have been shifting for a couple of months. The 2/3 are supposed to be out now. The 1/2inch I forget what happened to that. Going on the quality of the 1/3inch Sony, the 1/3inch Altasens might turn out to be very good (though I haven't heard of any dual slope/Autobrite type modes).

Delays have been common in the chip industry and the smaller circuit trace you go on chip (that increases the area available to light collecting sensor) the harder it gets. Back in the 80's there used to be cases of chip manufacturers virtually going broke due to unsolvable production delays in the foundries that caused like 90% bad chip rate and couldn't be found for many many months. Now everything is much cleaner, but still design or production issues delay things, then the new process becomes available or new technology, and you decide to incorporate that into the design, and then work out the bugs with that which delays things again. The product might actual benefit from the delays due to enhanced design. So not everything is a downside, but where is that Foveon X3 cinema chip for some competition. By the way I heard report of the Altasens being capable of ISO1600, or something like that, I understand this is a lot ahead of the competition.

I still would like to know where JVC is sourcing the sensor chips for it's HD100 from. I also would like to know if they are going to be using the 1/3inch Altasens in any of their products, as well as the 2/3inch. HD100 says CCD chips, so presumably it's not in that.

Wayne.