Suggestion for a new product ! Currently there are no good ways to provide high-quality minimally-compressed HD to customers. Blu-ray is a long-GOP format with significant compression, and cannot be considered anything other then "the best that there is at the moment". Panasonic needs to market a small box, similar to the Western Digital Media Player ($ 100), that will play DVCPRO HD files from an external hard drive and output that material via HDMI to high-def TVs. At a price of around $ 100, I believe that many wedding couples and others would buy the unit in order to watch pristine HD of their wedding or other event. To those on this forum who haven't seen DVCPRO HD played back by a camera directly to the TV, this method gives stunning HD that makes anything else pale by comparison. Any chance that Panasonic might consider such a product ?

Blu-ray is a long-GOP format with significant compression...Significant compression is a non-issue when it's done efficiently. The problem with Blu-Ray is the licensing costs. There's nothing wrong with the way it looks.

Significant compression is a non-issue when it's done efficiently. The problem with Blu-Ray is the licensing costs. There's nothing wrong with the way it looks.

Bingo. Nothing wrong with long GOP either given significant bandwidth. Especially as a delivery format.

Why should Panasonic offer a resolution sub-sampled delivery format that would only serve P2 shooters who don't want to cut Blu-Rays?

Chris and Perrone are spot-on: We don't need another delivery method; what we need are companies like Apple to produce BR authoring options. Rivergate Software is working on a Mac-compatible BR authoring app but there's no information about it's future availability and even less info about exactly what it will be capable of.

In my opinion, Blu-ray does not adequately reproduce what DVCPRO HD captures. Does Blu-ray allow for 4:2:2 video ? Plus, Blu-ray is significantly more complicated to author, the authoring equipment and software are expensive, and the players are a significant expense. Even the discs to too costly - soon you will likely be able to buy a 500 GB hard drive for what a BD disc costs. Let's see, 50 GB on a double-sided Blu-ray, or 500 GB of reusable hard drive... I think that the future is downloading video files, not buying Blu-ray discs, and playing video from hard drives. I would still choose to play special material (weddings, etc) from a hard drive with a $ 100 player, if it were available.

In my opinion, Blu-ray does not adequately reproduce what DVCPRO HD captures. Does Blu-ray allow for 4:2:2 video ?
No, but it does allow for full raster (1920x1080) recording, which with a good source can be a big advance on DVCProHD if intended for viewing on a 1080 TV. I'd prefer full raster 4:2:0 over 1280x1080 4:2:2 for a viewing format, especially if progressive.

In practical terms, for such as weddings, a player is likely to fail long before the media. Given a Blu-Ray disc, it's simple to just buy another player, if a hard disc player fails, it's likely to take the media with it.

In my opinion, Blu-ray does not adequately reproduce what DVCPRO HD captures. Does Blu-ray allow for 4:2:2 video ? Plus, Blu-ray is significantly more complicated to author, the authoring equipment and software are expensive, and the players are a significant expense. Even the discs to too costly - soon you will likely be able to buy a 500 GB hard drive for what a BD disc costs. Let's see, 50 GB on a double-sided Blu-ray, or 500 GB of reusable hard drive... I think that the future is downloading video files, not buying Blu-ray discs, and playing video from hard drives. I would still choose to play special material (weddings, etc) from a hard drive with a $ 100 player, if it were available.

Well,

Let me ask you this? How are most home users seeing HD right now? Satellite? Local cable? Do you think those signals rival Blu-Ray or DVCProHD? It's not even close. And I'd bet even money that a 40 Mbps Blu-Ray, well authored can be nearly indistinguishable on a home HDTV from DVCProHD. In fact, I'd bet real money you'd need scopes to see the difference on the edit machine. I've run the tests on everything from 4k RED footage, to Viper filmstream, to long-GOP 4:2:0 from my EX1. In every case VC-1 and H.264 at 20-30 mpbs was essentially lossless coming from those sources. And I've posted those results on this forum for all to see.

Blu-Ray disks are not more difficult to author depending on what you're trying to do. As for it costing more, it costs exactly the same for software for me as editing SD DVDs. My Blu-Ray media now costs less than my miniDV tapes, and I've posted about that here as well. Costs less per unit, and about half the price per gig.

Hard drives are not archival, which is why we use RAID in the first place. And you want to archive on them? A magnetic, and mechanical single source? Current Blu-Ray discs are available on spindle for about $5.50. Show me any modern HD at that cost. Any. I paid $7.99 a disk for Verbatim Blu-ray's last week, and there were cheaper options. Have you even researched what you're saying or just going off information from last year sometimee?

It will be a LONG time before the current internet structure lets you download movies at anyehere NEAR the quality of Blu-Ray. 30GB downloads in any reasonable amount of time onto the family player is a LONG way off. Look at the current limitations at places like Vimeo and Youtube. We are many years away from that being any type of viable solution. And with every major Hollywood studio pushing Blu-Ray for the foreseeable future, I think it's just fine. Blu-Ray players are currently selling for $200. Recorders for $300. It took YEARS for DVD to get there.

I think you need to do some homework on this one. Some of us have made the jump to Blu-Ray, and the stay you're saying just doesn't hold water.

Perrone and David - you both have very valid points, and I don't mean to provoke any ill feelings. If you are set up to do Blu-ray, then that is definitely the way to go, but to set yourself up to do this for small volumes is expensive. A media player would not be meant to replace Blu-ray, merely as an option for some viewers. Certainly, the HD delivered today by cable or satellite is absurbly bad - the superbowl here in HD on Dish was almost unviewable due to heavy compression. I continue to believe that a market would exist for an affordable DVCPRO HD media player.

I continue to believe that a market would exist for an affordable DVCPRO HD media player.

Maybe so, but at 1GB per minute for 1080p, I don't know how you'd get a 2 hour movie onto the thing.

DVCPROHD is a fine editorial/camera codec. But a DVCPROHD player? Why? Any XBOX 360 streaming well-encoded 1080p using say Windows Media Server or Twonkymedia from a home media server can provide as high or higher image quality *and* play games too. I see where you're coming from but I'll be honest when I say I've seen Blu-Rays that completely blow away any DVCPROHD content I've ever seen and I love DVCPROHD and have used it for many years.

And the whole it's a long-GOP blah blah format argument just doesn't hold at all for well encoded Blu-Rays. They look about as close to uncompressed HD as most consumers will ever see, especially given that it's full raster 1920x1080 which most DVCPROHD content is not. And yeah the last thing I'd ever want to see is yet another delivery format for the movie companies to fight over. And asking the consumer to purchase yet another format- one in this case that's 4:2:2 100 mbit at 1440x1080. Again why would they pay for a format that visually is really not night and day better than Blu-Ray. Now I'd pony up in a second for a $200 HDCAM SR or D5 DTR but that's never gonna happen- well maybe but not this year. Certainly not wedding couples would ever buy a $100 DVCPROHD player and also Panasonic would never bother making one because they would never ever make their money back. I could see such a thing appearing at maybe $3000-5000 initially and no one would ever buy it. And those that might be interested would ask- why would I buy such an expensive piece of gear that just plays DVCPROHD when for the same money I could buy a 17" MacBook Pro that plays DVCPROHD and is also a 17" MacBook Pro.

If you want better looking HD footage, grab a Mac Mini, hook up via DVI and stream ProRes or H.264 at 1080p to an HD display. Just as good if not better quality than Blu-Ray, DVCPROHD and loads better than the highly compressed satellite, cable or broadcast MPEG HD that most of America and HD homes elsewhere are already watching. Blu-Ray looks pretty awesome on my HD projector- better in fact than most film projections I see in the multiplexes these days and I make much better popcorn....

The next media player I buy is going to be something that plays 2K and 4K and is software upgradeable to whatever codec I want to play- something like the RedRay that RED may or may not ever deliver. That's the future, not DVCPROHD...

Noah