If this camera was embedded into gyro-cam circuitry, (with 2 half-deck HDCAM VTRs and a H.264 encoder+transmitter) this would be one of the cheapest solutions for a HD news helicopter!

If it's going to cost 19k, it's definitely only going to appeal to the pros.

It's not like most indy film makers can include such an expensive camera on their budget. IT costs the double of the HVX and 4x the HD100U.

Also, 1080p is quite useless for the time being, unless you're thinking of blowing up to film.

Why?

1080p is an accepted broadcast standard in the US. 1080/24p and 1080/30p are legitimate ATSC broadcast formats.

1080/24p and 1080/30p can also be broadcast within a 1080/60i stream, so you get the benefits of the look and feel of 24p or 30p, and are fully compatible with 60i.

Now, if you're talking 1080/60p, that currently would be of limited value as there are no 1080/60p broadcast standards or display devices. But 1080/24p and 1080/30p are far from useless, they're very much in demand.

I was thinking in terms of the present HDTV market.

90% of them are 720p (Plasma and LCD) and then there's a few that also support 1080i.

Is it really worth investing 19k, when you could get an HVX or HD100U for much less?

You're comparing apples and bananas. These cameras aren't remotely the same class. And...19K won't get you as far as most folks would likely want to go. More like 27K retail, so figure some off for the street. They're already selling into arenas and auditorium venues.
They're a pedestal camera, not suited for field production.

Sure they can. Think rental.

Ikegami also has nice box HD camera and also offers viewfinder and sholder mount for it. With this Sony have to figure out how attach those.

Radek

In this price range we could wait for the other JVC camera.

The 2/3" 3 chip CMOS camera with native 1920x1080 and 24p. Considering the JVC HD camera soon to come out has uncompressed output I'm sure this newer camera would as well.

Even if you don't use uncompressed output if JVC uses a 50 Mbit version of HDV on the 2/3" camera you could get some pretty amazing images out of that thing.

With uncompressed output however this camera could very well have superior or equal quality to the F900. If they put dual link SDI on the camera it could even reach the F950. All this for around the estimated $27,000.00 (I think without lens)

The JVC will not have 1080p and is only 25 Mbps. http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/f...&feature_id=01

Radek

No where does it state 25Mbps only. It is fully HDV compatable, so it will for sure have a 25/19Mbps miniDV tape mode, but this is not all the cam will be limited too.

From JVC
"Optional High Definition Direct To Edit™ (DTE™) disk record module
HD recording continuously up to 276 minutes on full size DV media, or up to 60 minutes on mini-DV media. "

Thanks for the clarification, Ken... much appreciated,

In JVC's first press leaks, they made mention that the forthcoming ProHD XE would support "higher bitrates". I don't know if they ever clarified what they meant by that -- do they mean that they'll support 36 or 50mbps? Or did they simply mean that when the new camera supports 1080, well, by default that would mean a "higher bitrate" of 25mbps (as opposed to the 19mbps currently supported by JVC HDV)...

I think we're all pretty much presuming that the ProHD XE system would have actually higher bitstreams -- it would seem quite silly to develop a $27,950 system and have it still limited to the same 19mbps bitstream, when so much more could be done with a few more bits (like 36 or 50mbps)...

I don't think the 7000U is supposed to be groundbreaking. JVC's campaing seems to rely more on offering solutions for HD with good price/performance.

I doubt this will even come close to the Varicam or Cinealta. It's not in the same league.

"I doubt this will even come close to the Varicam or Cinealta. It's not in the same league."

Depending on the final bitrate options, it could very well be in the same league as a Varicam. Actually I don't see how it couldn't come close or even surpass some of the earlier HD cams especially when used in an uncompressed mode. We have to remember its $30,000. about what a Varicam killer should cost in 2006!

The 6 GOP JVC MPEG2 compression about 2x as efficient as Varicam's, which records effective 40 Mbps at 24p, so 27,000 USD camera could have similar performance like Varicam/DVCPROHD, at 24p, not at 50-60p/i. But I doubt its 7,000 USD lens will be as good as 4x more expensive lenses used on Varicam, should probably be good enough.

Radek