I'm not surpirsed they said HD wasn't in the cards quite yet - we still have to go through the equivalent of the Betamax/VHS Wars regarding the HD-DVD standards. But I'm surprised at what you've said regarding 4:3 versus 16:9 SD as 16:9 has been the standard aspect ratio on much of European broadcast TV for a number of years. IMHO, the logical approach to use today is to shoot 16:9 HD or HDV, perhaps composing the shot with attention to its compatibility with pan-and-scan 4:3, and then downrez to 16:9 SD in post for distrbution. This workflow of downrezzing the HDV in post gives a generally higher image quality than either shooting native 16:9 SD or downrezzing an HDV image to SD in-camera. This way you have the best possible SD image now and your camera original masters are "future-proofed" by being in HDV for later reuse for HD broadcast or on HD-DVDs when the dust settles after the format war is resolved. If you've used a tool like Cineform to bring your footage into your NLE for editing, a lot of the headaches of editing native HD go away and it's a relatively simple matter to render the final program to SD now and then re-render the same project in HD later if desired.

how can they "clean up", when there is no delivery format for hdv? what are they giving the client? sd, of course! the fact that you haven't made any money off of hdv proves my point.

once again, that is not relevant to your wedding videography business, because your customers won't be coming back a year or two later for the hd dvd version.

btw, what are you using for an hdv playback deck while editing? let's not forget to add the expense of a deck into the cost of switching to hdv.

paul, i'm with you on the h1, it has real lens options, and soon there will be battery-powered hd recorders that you can plug into it, so you'll have options other than hdv... i think there could also be ways to monitize wildlife footage on the 'net, and you don't need hdv to do it... hi-8 or whatever would look great!

"...IMHO, the logical approach to use today is to shoot 16:9 HD or HDV..."

Yes, Steve, this is what most of us have been saying...but as Brian so rightly mentions - "...For many of us, especially those of us who are doing independent moviemaking on our own projects rather than work for hire, a camera represents a significant investment...(including related accessories etc)..."

That is why many of us choose to continue using the 4:3 & 16:9 SD cameras (that we already own, or can afford to buy)...because they provide the best possible quality - within our own price range - to enable us to provide the best end product for present and future sales to our intended audience.

You might try asking the people who have been more successful at marketing HDV to high-end clients: they're the ones who are "proving the point." And as I'm sure we've discussed there are ways to distribute HD content to customers today, mostly using Windows Media. ;-)

What's relevant is my ability to show HD content and demonstrate an ability to produce it to future potential clients. I'm shooting HD for all projects now, because I want the option to use sample clips in future demo reels.

I've been using the FX1s to bulk capture footage, but will probably switch to the HC1 now that I have that. Total cost of an FX1, HC1 and accessories ~$5000: not bad compared to DV or any other current HD camera option.

True enough for internet distribution, but shooting HD doesn't hurt you any there either.

I wouldn't scrap a perfectly usable SD camera just yet either but if one were buying new or finding age creeping up one's existing hardware, say it's getting near the end of the useful lifespan of the recording heads, that sort of thing, then HDV for the replacement should get very careful consideration IMHO.

Yes, Steve, I agree, and that is why I've been seriously considering purchasing the XL-H1...but following a great deal of thought (and watching the bank balance) I've decided that buying an extra XL2 is the wiser option, as I feel that 4:3 DVDs produced from the XL1s and 16:9 DVDs produced from the XL2 provide more than enough quality for almost 100% of the people that will be buying them (as long as my filming and editing techniques match that quality...).

we are still waiting for you to tell us how to make money with hdv.

so you were wearing out the tape drive of your camera, by using it as a playback deck... but a dv deck is only $200, vs. a $1400 hdv deck... now you are down by $1200, plus the absurd cost of hdv tape.

how much did your hdv edit solution cost? how much will an hd dvd authoring solution cost?

we are talking about making money with hdv NOW, not years down the road.

i can just picture you demonstrating hd footage on a 720 monitor, but then having to deliver sd dvd's... do you tell the client that you aren't capable of delivering what they are watching on the monitor?

The people who are most successful at that are apparently marketing aggressively to high end clients, and tacking on as much as 50% over their regular prices for HDV. Someone with more experience than I should be able to figure that out easily enough.

I've never owned a separate deck and never had a camera wear out from playing tapes too much, so I don't see a problem here. And I don't know anyone who's actually using $12 HDV tapes; I'm using the same tapes I used for DV and they're working fine. If anything I seem to be getting fewer dropouts in HDV than DV.

I spent about $2000 to build a new dual-core computer, which I could have held to $1500 if I hadn't splurged on some extras. HD authoring costs nothing extra for now using Windows Media on standard red-laser DVDs; still waiting to see what future options will cost. I figure the first time someone asks for an actual HD DVD, I'll probably take the finished file to a larger local shop and pay them to make the discs, so I don't have to shell out a grand or more for the burner.

If you can't make it work for you now, don't buy it. I'll admit I probably got ahead of myself to buy in early, but the image quality is better than I was getting from my old cameras so that's good enough for me for now. And I have some nice HD stock footage which there is apparently a market for, but I haven't gotten around to tapping into that yet.

For now I just show widescreen SD DVDs on my 1080i rear-projection HDTV and leave the HD details for clients who specifically ask about that. As we've discussed here before there have been ways to deliver HD content to customers for some time now, for those willing to be cutting-edge adopters. Most folks are happy with widescreen DVDs for now, and HDV works much better for me for making those than my old cameras would have done. If you wish, you can think of HDV cameras as widescreen DV cameras which just happen to have an option to record 700-800 TV lines of resolution on inexpensive miniDV tapes.