I have a couple of questions about this: the V1 will not downconvert from HD to SD Letterbox using the iLINK interface. It will using analog, HDMI, and S-video. It will downconvert squeeze and edgecrop using iLINK. Is this a deliberate marketing limitation to differentiate it from the Z1, or is there a hardware or software reason?
Secondily, for those of us whose clients will be slow in trading up to HD players and TVs, producing in both SD and HD will be necessary. Any thoughts on how to use two separate cable systems efficiently?
And should one be annoyed by this limitation?
thx
ja

From my perspective it is not a problem. I know some have different opinions and I understand their frustration.

Putting 16:9 material in a 4:3 timeline is painless with the software I use and something I do on a regular basis.

In general the current NLE software and computer hardware can easily do the letting-boxing for you in real time and even give you some useful options that would harder to do during ingest like pan-and-scan 16:9 > 4:3.

I think in dropping this feature is Sony acknowledging that with the current NLE software/hardware there is less value in doing letterboxing in camera. I'm sure it saves on DSP programming and reduces processing demand. With the price-point of the V1 I'm much happier to have a more affordable camera that is missing a feature I would likely not use anyway.

Just my opinion...

Chris

I think it would have been nice if the V1 could do cropping via FireWire, and not just via the analog outputs.