The first HD images I ever saw were about 8 years ago courtesy of JVC. The JVC camera was about $60,000 which was cheap by HD standards. They called it the KH-100U, "the industry's first affordable HDTV camera." The recorder was separate and powered by electricity so it wasn't really portable. They called that the SR-W320U. It could also play VHS and S-VHS along with the odd-ball W-VHS format. Everything was analog. I've still got the literature for all this stuff.