Is Sony's EX the death nell for tape...
 

You only have to look at digital photography to see the future of video tape. I remember 5 years ago being told that digital (Still cams) are good but it will never replace 35mm film...The same will happen to tape and I for one will not miss tape.
Tape plus points... Affordable, storable, hard copy of your work (Archive ?)

Tape minus points... damaged easily, causes head clogging, temperature & weather dependent, far to many formats.

Try changing tape in a dusty environment...not recomended, some one comes to me with Betacam or M2 (Older formats) even Hi8mm and you are scupperd, unless you have retained one of the playback machines for the aforementioned tape format. Tape both professional and domestic has been riddled with formats to such an extent that 10 years down the line some poor video operator will presented with tape he or she cannot play.

Tape = format = dedicated playback machine.

We have all the video manufacturers to thank for this mess, it may be affordable and good for having a hard copy of your work but archiving it most certainly is not, I have 2 boxes in my attic with Hi band Umatic tapes, Hi8mm tapes and Betamax tapes and I do not have a working playback machine to see any of this material, so it may as well not exist and 10 years from now DV will be in a similar boat. My advice is archive all your tape today because you won't be able to access it tomorrow.
Just before you attack me with the all the cons for solid state...at least you don't need to buy a £600 upwards player to view/transfer solid state.

No, the EX will not be the death of tape.

Clearly you are not yet familiar with our very strict policy against personal attacks.

P2 was not the death of tape. Neither will EX be the death of tape.

True,
but I have the feeling the sales are going to be dramactically reduced over the next 5 years, if not sooner. At least in the prosumer/consumer market.

oh geeeez

Tape is not going anywhere for many more years to come. If it were that easy I think there are many of us here who would have killed of 3/4" decades ago.

Heck, I can still get 2" tapes played back. The bigger question is why does even knowing about 2" tape make me feel ancient when I come into the forum, lol.

K

I would think tape based formats will have almost died in the professional market within the next 10 years apart for being in the archives. Even the consumer market will be either using discs or flash cards of some sort mainly by then. 10 years ago the VHS market was vibrant. Nobody I know (including the oldies) ever buys or records onto VHS these days.

Granted, it's somewhat apples and oranges, but it was not that long ago I remember many saying the same thing about DVD....
Well, we know the rest of that story.

Again, I agree - maybe not in the near future for pro stuff, but prosumer/consumer is a different story.

Last year (and I bet nothing has changed) the production house I worked at got a ton of jobs where we finished out to VHS, or were we dubbed 100's of VHS tapes at a time.

Tape is on it's way out in some respects, sure. But lets not forget about all those prod/post houses that have invested heavily in HDcam and DVCPro decks over the last few years. They will kick and scream to keep tape around due to their large investments in it.

Nope, not a death knell for tape. It is another step away from tape in terms of acquisition, but for post and long term storage things are much less clear.


-A

If you love Fawlty Towers then you will recognise this famous phrase from the guy "from Barcelona".....

E V E N N N T U A A A L L L Y Y Y Y Y Y

When was the last time any of you bought a Kodak 35mm film
 

Personally I have not bought a 35mm film in over 7 years... professionally I have not produced any VHS copies for the last 2.5 years and have de-rigged my VHS dupe bank 15 months ago. I use P2, DV mini tape and 2 FS4 recorders so in my small operation my use of DV tape is less than 50% and that's only for back up. If after playing with a Sony EX camera in October I decide to finalize my order I will no longer produce any video work with tape.
P2 was never going to be the death nell for tape but it has had a higher demand than even Panasonic were expecting. Hence Sony who have had a good uptake of XDCAM partly due to the many broadcasters and those of you who can't see past the name Sony, don't get me wrong Sony kit is 1st class but personally I prefer to keep my options opened. You can bet if Sony get a good feedback from the EX we will see the SxS card being adopted throughout the rest of their Pro range with cameras that take 4-6 cards etc. Don't think JVC and Canon are not hot on Sonys heels with their own version of tapeless cameras and if they want a tip from me they should adopt the express card and standardize the video industry for once in it's life.
You only have to see the Pro 35mm Digital uptake to see the future of tape and those of you who poo poo this have rose coloured spectacles.

I bought 35mm film last week.

On the consumer end tape will find its way off into the sunset on a more rapid path.

On the pro end, especially on the post side, tape is going to be around for a much longer time. There is a lot of long form production which is still going to take place on tape not to mention huge tape libraries that are not about to get transferred over to hard drive,.

K

Tape will be with us for a very, very long time, just not the kind of tape most are thinking of. Tape still has a bright future in a purely digital world except here I'm talking about data tape not video tape.
Acquisition to video tape is what will fade away fairly quickly.
One of the problems with tape in the consummer world is since the demise of VHS camcorders there's no tape format that the consummer can play back in their domestic device.
In the pro / broadcast world tape is just too slow to work with and the transports a source of reliability issues, so even here I think we'll see tape fade away as soon as possible for acquisition. It'll still hang around for a long time outside of acquisition and archiving however out national broadcaster is now archiving their audio and video assets to data tape. That's the advantage of the data workflow, one tape format for everything for nearline / offline storage and disks arrays for online storage.

As long as people have tens of thousands of dollars invested in cameras that record to tape and remain of broadcast quality, tape will keep kicking around. What will be interesting to see in the coming years is the archival formats we move to after we stop recording to tape.

Recording video on solid state memory cards won't take over until it's as cheap and convenient as shooting on tape, and we're probably about five years away from seeing that happen. Consider that a miniDV tape holds slightly less data than a 16GB memory card and costs around $5 (give or take a little), while a 16GB card currently costs about $200. If the price of such cards falls by a factor of two every year it'll be $6.25 in the year 2012, so mark your calendar...