Hopefully. But remember, I'm fussy. I do think that DVCproHD is too compressed, but from my experience, it's less visually compressed than HDV, but that's comparing Varicam to HDV. Hopefully the same or similar improvements will be seen with the HVX over the HDV. However, I still think that the SDX900 (from what I've seen), gives you the best image from a Panasonic camera, HD or not!

Graeme

Graeme: out of curiosity, what do you think are the best DV cameras in the ~$4-6K price range?

I have no idea. And I don't know what your priorities in a camera are. From the images I've seen the best affordable DV camera is the DVX100. If you want real widescreen, the XL2 or the Sony HDV in DV mode are your options.

Graeme

Thanks, that's consistent with what I've concluded that the Sony FX1 is a good value in a true widescreen camera. As far as that's concerned, the HVX200 running in DVCPro50 mode could be an interesting compromise for producing widescreen SD output. By the way, I did some tests recently which convinced me that FX1 HDV footage downsampled after editing to widescreen SD looks better than FX1 footage shot in widescreen DV mode: http://www.videomem.com/HDV/encoding...comparison.htm

I'm still debating how I want to archive my HDV footage, but hopefully next year's HD DVD options will help with that.

The BBC primarily use the Z1 as a high quality widescreen SD DV camera.

Downsampling HDV to uncompressed SD should look better than HDV downsampled to DV (as long as you avoid MPEG2 provoking situations) or shot as DV.

Graeme