Hi Jonty, thank you for posting. The news is...we're still working on this. I've made a decision early on not to hype the product (too much) until it is announced (vaporware and all).

I can make a few statements that are harmless enough:
- there is a team working on this
- there is no target date for series production, certainly not for this year; we do have something working, but in dev board form factor.
- we know how to make it quite small, small enough to mount the DDR underneath or on the side of the camera (external dimensions 160 x 120 x 52 mm); battery is internal, storage is external.
- we've largely finalized the BOM (Bill of Materials) and have contacted suppliers for volume pricing
- we won't be using Intensity cards, but our own custom HDMI aquisition design (this allows us to shrink the form factor, but lengthens the R&D time)
- a larger form factor using Intensity Pro can also be built around the same design (storage is internal); external dimensions are 220 x 160 x 52 mm
- the codec is Cineform Neo HD
- recording time on one battery charge is estimated at 2 1/2-3 hrs.
- it will record 1920x1080p24 4:2:2 8bit; it won't do i60, but it will do i50.
- it may be able to do pulldown removal from i60 to p24 at 1920x1080; yet to be determined.
- the enclosure is black and stylish
- it's going to run hot; the enclosure is the heatsink

Damn, this sounds good. I might very well buy one if the price is reasonable.

Pulldown removal
 

question for those in the know; we need to test 60i->24p pulldown removal for the DDR project; my acquisition options are very limited (PAL land). As it stands, we either:

1) rent a F-950 and hire a DP to operate it; go off and find some complex outdoor scenery to see if the codec holds up. More than once, difficult logistics, on rental's place schedule; cost is 500 EUR/day with the DP.

2) buy a HV-20 from an US outlet (only E models over here of course). We get to use the cam whenever we need it, and the cost is a couple of days of F-950 rental.

Aside from the 8 bit vs 10 bit resolution in F-950 (which doesn't matter as *this* version of the DDR is 8 bit), is there a compelling reason not to go with 2) ?

We're looking for scenes with lots of detail and color, as I said stress-testing the real time compression. Would one cam's 8 bit 4:2:2 HDMI signal be (significantly) different than another's? (I do expect a 10 bit signal to be different, but that's not what we'll be testing).

Looking forward to your replies; it will help us make major decisions in this project.
As a side note, how um..unfortunate would be if pulldown removal didn't work 100% of the time (like very complex scenes)? I know the situation is close with our current part choices.

Any update?

Any guess on delivery? Weight? Price?

Mathieu, I do value your continuing interest; put yourself in my place for one moment please. Yes I do have projections for those questions, they're part of the business plan. However making this information public - for a yet to be announced product - will paint ourselves in a corner. There are also features I'm not disclosing before announcement to maintain competitive advantage.

As I mentioned before, there will be no series production this year. The thing is this project has snowballed in terms of engineering to the point where it bears little resemblance to how this thread started. We gain a lot in form-factor by doing this, at the expense of lenghtened R&D.

It's a HDMI DDR and it uses Cineform, but beyond that, it is (literally) going to be a small black box, attachable to a cam like Sony V1.