Status NAB Sony HDV camera?

[Dave Campbell]

I was expecting more data from NAB on this.
Anyone has any status? Does it look like it will
ship next year? I must not be the only one holding
off buying the PD170 until this is some decent news.

Thanks

Dave

[Dave Largent]

One to two years yet.
I've heard that those manning the Sony booth were
more fishing/doing market research for comments about what consumers would like to see in the HDV cam than making
any announcements.
Also, low light reach will likely be way below what the VX/PD offers.
If low light isn't a concern, I'd get the PDX10 now rather than
wait a couple years.

[Frank Granovski]

Dave, I heard no news either. If you want widescreen in a 3-chip cam, like you mention, get a PDX10. The GS100 also has good widescreen and I assume the new GS400 will have the same. The GS400 should be out in a couple of months---no XLRs, though, like the PDX10.

[Hans Kuipers]

I also wanted to buy the PD170 untill I heard the news that there will be a HDV cam with true 16:9. What to do? wait ? how long? and finally it turns out that the low light capability is a lot worse than the 170 (as one can expect if the size of the CCD's are not bigger than 1/3"). I know you will tell me that you can never keep up with new developments but it would be a pitty to buy a PD170 now and within a year there will be the HDV version !!

[Mike Rehmus]

Hans,

Only you can decide when you need a camera. It is the on-going delema of technology buyers. Whatever you buy will be replaced fairly soon.

The truth about HDV is that there is very little support infrastructure around including HDV player/recorders and displays. Or those that are available are very expensive.

I think that viable consumer-level HDV is quite a ways off and the first HDV camera owners (as they, the JVC owners, are today) will always have to downconvert their footage.

So if you don't need a camera, then wait. If you need a camera, you will have to obtain one.

Personally, I think consumer or prosumer HDV cameras are goint to be a PITA. Hard to light for, plenty of motion artifacts, etc.

[Hans Kuipers]

Hi mike,

Thanks for your reply. I agree with the fact that 1/3" CCD will give poorer low light capabilities (the question is how poor) but why will there be motion artifacts with HDV? So you think that the PD170p will be a good buy for the moment and that it will take at least another 3 years before all growing pains of HDV cams are dissolved ?

[Dave Largent]

Just read on another forum that a poster asked his
Sony dealer when the cam will be out and he was
told September, for $7000.

[Gints Klimanis]

The HDV motion artifacts are generated by its MPEG2 *inter*frame compression. The current DV25 (25 MBits JPEG-type compression) format used on miniDV cassettes does *intra*frame compression only, and offers an uncompressed 48000 Hz, 16-bit stereo audio stream. Though, it is not accurate to say that the miniDV is immune from motion artifacts. It's easy enough to watch the DV-compressed blocks of a statinary object animate when nearby objects move. The motion artifacts of HDV will simply be different in nature.

[Mike Rehmus]

Look at the artifacts on DVDs. That is MPEG2. At high data rates, they are OK. At low data rates, they exhibit more and more artifacts.

Will the average viewer notice them? Probably not. But the folks who like 24p will not like this even further departure from a film-like appearance.

I'm very curious to see how far down HD comes in price for cameras and editing gear.

[Dave Largent]

Just had to pass this along. I mentioned previously
that I heard on another forum that it'll be
out in September. Well now the poster
added that the Sony sales rep who told him this
also said to him that he saw the demo at NAB
and that the "footage is amazing" and that it
would never cut with his DVX100, implying
he should get two of the HDVs!
There is no "footage", correct?
Wasn't the NAB demo a block of wood?

[Hans Kuipers]

Mike# I was one of the first who had a dvd player and I am very critical in the picture quality but I have never seen motion artifacts!!!!!

[Jonah Lee Walker]

At the demo at NAB, they did show a camera, that had a playback deck in it. It was not the one in the case, but one locked in another case. It was obviously not a signal from the camera's curcuitry, but something the camera was playing back. It was a gorgeous 16:9 image 1080i image of people at the beach. It displayed no artifacting or interlacing images in the short time it was on display. Of course there was no information given on how this signal was aquired, or even if it was HDV. All I can say is at the very least the camera he was showing either contained a deck or was a remote control for some sort of HD deck that showed back it's image on the monitor. It was sleight of hand, as the camera was obviously not working hardware.

[Mike Rehmus]

<<<-- Originally posted by Hans Kuipers : Mike# I was one of the first who had a dvd player and I am very critical in the picture quality but I have never seen motion artifacts!!!!! -->>>

I did not say motion artifacts although DV does have them, especially for rotating objects.

Artifacts are caused by the compression routines that were not planned with the concept of high-contrast graphics and the like. You can see easily compression artifacts on DVDs around graphics like titles, etc. Takes good planning and a good VBR conversion scheme to avoid most of them.

[Mike Rosing]

At NAB the Sony demo guy told me it might be out by February. Also, no analog high definition video output.