Douglas Spotted Eagle,

I’m pretty sure that Sony is replacing HDV with AVCHD.

Speculating about camcorders can be considered entertainment but its pure hell reading rumors about future Apple Products.

I'm not just "pretty sure" that you're incorrect.

Why wouldn’t AVCHD be replacing HDV?
Isn’t AVCHD a much better compression? Or could you prove to me that HDV is much better.

the question isn't whether AVC HD is better or worse, that's a different discussion.
Your post was that you're pretty sure that "AVC HD is replacing HDV."

And I'm telling you straight up; You're wrong.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Yup...read my posts going back over the years. I don't often take absolutist positions. That should tell you something.
It's amazing that you could possibly know as much as you purport to know about cameras that don't yet exist, with a format that to date, hasn't shown anything great, that while mathematically could potentially be superior, it's all nothing more than hype and conjecture at this point. Haven't we had enough of that in the low-cost HD realm over the past year?
The consumer-grade cams are due in a couple months.
HDV ain't going anywhere for a while. AVC HD absolutely isn't replacing HDV at any near point in time.

Wow, things are warming up. (in a nice sense)

I am not going to continue the speculation from my part, but one extremely large difference between Japan and the West (in particular the USA) is the ways of doing business and the ethics involved.
NEVER transfer your knowledge of USA ethics to a Japanese environment.
There is very little similarity.
Internationally e.g. Sony's offices in the USA may be running as per USA rules and regulations. They have to. You have so many lawyers and contracts and clauses etc. etc. to keep in order....or it can cost a lot of dollars in compensation if you step out of line.
For the most Japan still runs on verbal agreement and a polite bow!

Slightly more off topic but maybe is useful to show the difference:
The first time I ran into the Western idea of "Model release forms" I was totally surprised. In Japan the notion of a "model release form" is very strange. Here you just say - Do you mind if I take some sequences of you for a video production I am invloved in? If they smile and say -OK! That's all that is necessary.......

What brought on this long OT posting of mine?
It was Paolo's remark:
This would be true for a Western branch....but not for Japan itself!

Here endeth my comments on this thread......... smile......

Boy, I guess I'm just full of contradictory posts this evening, eh? ;-)
FWIW, the NDA agreement w/Sony Japan is longer, more tightly written than the NDS with Sony Broadcast, Sony Electronics, or Sony Media Software.
Yeah, Japanese business is different, but they're also nowhere near as trustful as you might suggest. A loose comment on the golf course as you've intimated, if correct, could do significant damage to a company if the information leaked, as you've leaked it here. Imagine for a moment you're correct;
A product manager at Panasonic/JVC/Canon/Grass Valley/Ikegami reads the post, and says "Hmm...this guy knows someone at Sony, and he seems to be credible, Sony isn't doing anything for four years....(or Sony is replacing HDV with AVC HD) so we can create something new in 1 year and sell four times the amount, but we can slack on our research because the big boys are sitting on their butts for four years...."
This is why we don't allow speculative rumors on DVInfo.net. Because there are actually some people naive enough to believe them and spread them further.

Ok Douglas, as another Douglas....that is fine for me.
I am sorry to have gone a bit too far on this one.... maybe the humidity and the 98F outside was too much for my brain ..... smile.
I am off to Scotland and my homeland for 2 weeks (starting Monday) with my family (and Z1.....). So I will have plenty to read and catch up with when I get back.
Hope you and all the others on this great forum have a wonderful summer.....

Given that the format was just announced conceptually, I'd be surprised to see shipping cameras before this time next year at the earliest, and more likely end of next year or even early 2008. If I'm wrong so be it, but how often do we hear announcements like this and then see cameras just a few weeks later?

On the other hand, cameras like the Sanyo HD1 show that MPEG4-based video cameras are possible now. We'll see what happens between now and Christmas.

In the long run AVCHD may replace HDV, but don't expect it to happen overnight. First someone has to actually ship some cameras and software has to be upgraded to process the resulting footage, then we have to assess how well all that works. We're still barely able to work with HDV effectively due to the heavy level of compression, and AVCHD will be an even bigger challenge in that regard. The fact that AVCHD is 'better' in the sense of being more compressed may not work in its favor here, just as not everyone considers HDV better than less compressed recording solutions.

AVC makes more sense for now as a delivery codec than a recording one, but we'll see what happens once AVCHD cameras become available. It's going to be tough to beat the convenience of recording an hour of HDV on an inexpensive miniDV tape, unless someone releases an AVCHD camera recording to those same tapes - which so far is not being proposed. And until we actually see AVCHD cameras in operation it's just speculation whether they'll outperform HDV, even though in theory that should be possible. Having a more efficient codec doesn't necessarily ensure better results, especially in inexpensive cameras depending on real-time encoding chips.

AVC-HD Camcorders - When?

This Wednesday if these articles are correct.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13679
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5929
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/420...next-week.html

Since none of the articles actually say anything about the camcorders, consider it verified that they are correct. ;-)

Also note that the camcorders being announced are *consumer* camcorders, not professional. As mentioned earlier in this thread, AVC HD is not anything close to "replacing HDV."
More on that later.

I'd like to refer readers of this thread to the following thread about Sony's new AVCHD consumer camcorders.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=71759