I'm with Chris, Ashley, and Daymon: if the camera reviewers and talkback communities keep keep on bitching and moaning for faster tape speeds, better bit rates, Sony and JVC and the rest might at least have to consider it.

Like other posters, I am worried about 1080i--without progressive scan we're hobbled. Of course 108024p takes up less information and tape time than 108060i so we can dream that some day... I know, I know it's too much to ask but--sighhh...

Can you believe just a year and a half ago, all the experts in all the DV magazines were saying with full authority that home HD cams would definitely not appear before 2010 to 2015. I'm sure the Sony will be ten times better but thanks JVC for forcing the HD revolution ten years early.

For those that didn't see the pic, it kind of looks like a VX2000.

I spent some time looking at a closeup of the hi-res pic trying to find a 24p mode on it. Didn't see one.

I hate to keep driving this home, but why was this camera announced on the Sony Europe site? Though a PAL version would be great for filmmakers, others want 30p or 60i versions.

What are your thoughts? We should try nailing down what kind of camera this is, NTSC or PAL.

heath

Is it suppose to be shown at NAB? What's the estimate
on when a production model will be out?

A reliable source says Sony will be previewing an HDV camera, likely a 3 ccd, at NAB. Which leads me to believe my source is hinting at this camera. That could be the answer to the NTSC or PAL question.

heath

More info at http://www.abcdv.com/

Ron

Well, HD is neither NTSC nor PAL, it's HD... so as far as that goes, it should be irrelevant (although if the camera has a standard DV shooting mode, then PAL/NTSC would become relevant for that mode)...

... but considering that we know nothing about it at all, we know nothing about what modes it shoots in, we know nothing about what resolutions it may offer (other than a passing reference to 1080), we know nothing about what refresh rates it may offer (60i? 50i? 30P? 25P?)... and Sony USA refuses to even talk about the product (other than to call it a "mockup", not even a prototype)...

I don't think you're going to get any answers on this forum anytime soon.

However, it is a little curious that it would be introduced in PAL territories, since PAL countries seem largely indifferent to HDTV.

Heath , I think it is pure timing. CEBIT comes before NAB every year. Things get announced there first. In this internet age marketing is borderless and keeps everyone guessing regardless of standards used. This will stop people making decisions until they get more information so will hurt JVC or anyone else who announces until all the information is out most likely at NAB. Nice delaying tactic. Besides HD is HD.

Ron

Good point, Ron.

BUT, JVC has announcement of their OWN 3 CCD HDV ENG-style camera:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23142

Thanks,

heath

JVC will have a 3 CCD HDV Camera to show at NAB. The scoop can be found here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23142

heath

I agree. Everyone is now going to wait till after NAB. They were going to do that anyway!!! I am sure it will be expected that Sony, JVC Canon and eventually Panasonic will have HDV products that closely match the present lineup in DV. Its like D8 but with the ability to still record in the old format!!!! I feel the camera most likely to get hurt by these new announcements might be the very nice looking DVC30 from Panasonic. If a HDV "VX3000" or HDV GL3 is in the works I am sure most people would opt for a camera with a future rather than a past. Although I am a very serious amateur ( rent Panasonic AGDVC200 and DVX100 for most shoots with my own 1CCD Sony's as backup) I would consider buying something like this HDV Sony announcement as I feel it would have a future for a few years. I still have a Sony VX3 Hi8 I bought when they first came out and have not felt a similar breakthrough camera has appeared since then. I looked at the VX1000 and VX2000 too but when compared to the VX3 they both lack a lot of controls like shutter speed and gain that are excluded from the prosumer models and only made available on the DSR range. The down side of the DSR range is no LP speed which puts me at a disadvantage shooting stage productions that always need to have the security of tape lengths of at least 90 mins. I am looking forward to a HDV camcorder that takes large DV cassettes like the JVC DV5000 or Panasonic AGDVC200.

Ron

I have merged three "DSR 0000" threads into one. At this point let's keep the discussion in this thread, at least until the "DSR 0000" is assigned a model number.

Pace yourselves, folks. <g>

It's probably no more significant than the "DSR 0000" moniker, but I noticed the (mysterious vanishing) hi-res image file was named HDV_G1_hisres.JPG....

Good idea, Ken. We're just all excited.

heath

At this point I'd bet there are 4-6 divisions in Sony working on this little toy. And all of them probably have their own product designations.

Heath, are you a little excited? You just posed the same thing 5 times! ;>)
Ken

Actually, no, but I see your point. Probably because I have so many other things on my mind, I just kept typing it. Also two threads were merged into one, and both the JVC announcement posts were in there. I will correct it!

heath

I think there should be laws against paper releases and announcments. Now i cant wait to see the green flag drop and the b**s*** stop :D.

OOHHh exciting days.

/me still wishes for a 30/45minute HQ mode and 720p120/100/60/50/30/25/24 all in one cam. *sigh*

Without dreams we dont get realities i spose eh? :)

Did someone want the hiRez pic? i have it...

I'm guessing the 1-2-3 buttons are memory settings for focus.

Sony Corporate maketing must be very proud of how well everyone is hyping their non existant cam. Basically grinding JVC's HD10 sales to a halt. Too bad considering they will be the only HDV game in town for another 6-8 months, maybe longer. If they release a seperate pro version it could be this time next year.
Sony will gladly string us along to keep the sale, its only smart business.
The "leaked" price tag of $5000 will surely be $5999 when released, or even more is Sony hasn't over estimated how much 3chip HDV componets will drop by the shipping date. Hype Low - Sell high. Regardless it will be 2+ times the price of the HD10 when it ships.
It will for sure be a nice cam if all the specs stick through roll-out. I do wonder what they will disable or configure in a annoying way? No cutting edge low cost cam is ever perfect. There not designed to be ;>)
Ken

Ken,

Good point, but I think with JVC announcing their 3 chip camera before Sony can at NAB may have helped a lot. it says it's an ENG style camera which may mean a removable lens!

heath

very cool...I am going to NAB now.

Bet sony will drop another hidef bomb in a few months with an upgraded professional version.

All Canon has to do is drop hd chips in it's xl1s camera body, and with replaceable lenses it will jump to the front.

I would not ever buy a jvc if I knew a proven workhorse like a vx2100 HDV was available, even if I have to pay extra $$.

The big question: Can 1080i interlaced with mpeg2 compression be tamed with software to make a great indie film blowup??

Don't forget Canon and Sharp still have cameras in the works! (Or just decks...)

heath

A guy on another forum has put up a link with the original hi-rez pic. A number of people have asked about it in here.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-12/74415/SonyHDV.jpg

I'm of mixed emotions about this new development. On the one hand, it's incredibly exciting, but it completely blows my budget. I hadn't planned to make the jump to HD for another two years. By then I would already have that Vinten tripod I've had my eye on. Five grand is just a lot of money to come up with, and it means not buying a lot of other stuff like more lights and audio equipment. I know it's the story and craft more than it's about pixels, and we're still years away from masses of people owning HD TVs, but if your main dream is to shoot a feature with any chance of wide release, it's going to be awfully hard to shop around something shot on NTSC the minute this beast gets released.

Not neccesarly...

Movies shot on 16 mm still do well, as do anything else. I would focus more on the story and quality of the picture than on what camera you use. It's an old debate, I know...

If you can't afford it, try the HD10. Check out some movies shot on the HD10 here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22833

and

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22374

heath

A guy on another forum has put up a link with the original hi-rez pic.

Well almost the original. I had to tone it down to 800k or so as the original was almost 3MB.

Elsewhere someone has posted another photo of the unit displayed at ceBIT. Interestingly, it doesn't have the "3 CCD" emblem on the lens barrel...

Yeah, but 16 mm looks great. Probably much better than even this camcorder is cabable of. In any case, I can't afford 16 mm either. I'm just saying, it's thrown my plans completely out of whack. For the short term, all we can do is wait and see. Who knows if this camcorder is even going get released this year. Good point about the HD10. They're about to get really cheap.

Marco,

I understand budgets are tough, but as we always say, buy what you can afford! The HD10 is still pretty cheap right now.

heath

I don't see the HD10 as suddenly getting cheap. It has no other HDV cam to compete with, untill that time, why would they lower the price? I imagine there was a limited number produced, of which they will replace with the "updated"HD10 when stalk is depleted. Sometime early summer is my guess, as I believe they will announce this "updated"HD10" at NAB. I didn't see XL1 or DVX100 get derastically cheap once the ,s and a, models were announced.
Ken

Camcorderinfo has the picture of the proposed Sony HD as well as a short article. The article title states that the camera will have 3 CCDs.

If nothing else, at least all this speculation helps build-up a little more excitement for NAB this year. Last year, excitement going into NAB was pretty flat and not without good reason. Nothing big in the prosumer market was unveiled as I recall.

Happy dreams gentlement and ladies. Nick

Here's a couple of larger, better pics. One of 'em was re-sized by Tommy:

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/sonyhdv1.jpg

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/sonyhdv2.jpg

Tommy -- can you email the original 3mb image to me please? Thanks,

Thanks, Chris! now we need a pic of the JVC 3 ccd camera.

heath

> Sony would never agree to fewer minutes and better quality.
> Who needs better quality and more editing lattitude when you
> can get a few more minutes per tape?

Jjajaja. You mean you did not notice that they give us less time with the *same* quality with DVCAM? :D

Now, as I mentioned months ago, it is highly unlikely that they can get professionally acceptable 1440x1080 into 25Mbps or less (unless maybe at 15fps or something like that), so I think the Sony prototype is a consumer model and it is likely that we will have 30 or 40 minute tapes with a higher data rate for the pro model. It would not make much sense to have 3 CCDs and then lose so much to compression. Bot it still makes sense for the high-end consumer who will not be doing fancy stuff like color correction.

any info about european frame rates on this camera?
25p?

maybe links?

thanks,

filip

..will have to be seriously de-tuned, as not to compete with Sony's higher end HD cameras.

3CCDs, manual controls, ND filters, variable audio inputs etc... Seems too good to be true. Maybe Sony will make up for it with the frame rate. Maybe 15 frames interlaced??

I'm trying to figure out what the "catch" is.

-Chris Gordon

Chris,

The list of differences between the F900 series and this PD???? HDV version would be too long to describe. It don't think the HDV model poses any risk of cannibalizing sales from the high end HD models.

I think however that DV will be completely phased out ultimately. As a matter of fact, I am certain of it.

This reminds me of Adam Wilt's column in the April issue of DV magazine in which he discusses the HD-10U and HDV: Remember when DV came out? Recall how horrible it was supposed to be? Yet it turned out to be mostly harmless; the images were (and are) nice - better than they should have been for the price and the amount of compression.

HDV looks to repeat that history: Even though the pictures are compressed to within an inch of their lives, they look a lot better than they have any right to. No, they are unlikely to be th equal of DVCPROHD images, nor HD D-5 images of the same resolution, but - like DV in the SD world - they may very well turn out to be "good enough."

Good point Boyd,

One thing to keep in mind. HDV isn't compressed more than broadcast digital television in SD or HD. The only difference is that the compression occurs during acquisition.

I think that a 3CCD HDV Camera like Sony's or JVC's new model will do wonders for the format.

> One thing to keep in mind. HDV isn't compressed more
> than broadcast digital television in SD or HD. The only
> difference is that the compression occurs during acquisition.

That is only partially correct. There is also an important resolution difference. Even though the camera has 'pro' controls, it pours it's output into a format without full HD resolution (the high quality HD spec is 1920x1080, not 1440x1080). This is like what happened years ago, with the best Hi8 gear, sure it had all the manual controls so you could make the best of it, but there was no way Hi8 gear could compete (even had it had the same optics and sensors) to Betacam SP.

I agree that HDV is a nice format and the image quality will most likely surpass that of standard definition DV, but HDV has been designed from the ground up as a consumer solution. So was DV, I think when they designed DV they did not suspect it would cannibalize so much pro acquisition the way it did. So now they are taking extra steps to make sure the consumer gear can never be as good as the full high-quality spec. No matter how well your HDV footage is aquired, it will always have less resolution than your 1920x1080 HDTV.

I'll bet there will be HDVCAM or something like that with the full res and a wider data rate for pro's, but that will happen very gradually, after they sell each and every one of us 'semi-pro' guys some 17-25Mbps HDV equipment and have milked all 'legacy' HD's milk (DVPROHD, D9HD, HDCAM, HD-D5, CineAlta). By the time that happens, it might not be MPEG2-based. MPEG4 is a likely candidate.

And then by the time we are all feeling comfortable with HD crammed into de MiniDV form-factor, they will have us throw all our gear away and switch to optical disks, removable hard disks or solid state memory. Oh well...

No matter how well your HDV footage is aquired, it will always have less resolution than your 1920x1080 HDTV.

That is if you have a 1080p HDTV (very few currently exist). Most consumer HDTVs sold today are only capable of displaying 720p and 1080i of which there is little difference.

1080p - 1920x1080
1080i - 1920x540 (two fields)
720p - 1280x720

So is it still up in the air whether the Sony will be 720p or 1080i?

I don't think we'll be seeing a 1080p consumer cam anytime soon.

Here's a good article on the topic:

http://www.uemedia.net/CPC/videography/printer_7015.shtml

ITU HD 1080i is 1920x1080, HDV 1080i seems to be 1440x1080.

Tommy can you tell us where the 1920x540 number comes from?

You are correct Ignacio.

I removed my question after doing a bit of research.

I guess anything above or equal to 1280 X 720 is considered HD.

Ignacio, I went back and edited my post to reperesent the two 1920x540 fields. 1080i is of course interlaced which leaves two fields of 1920x540.

1440x1080i is not a specific HD format. So technically, if Sony does not have a 1280x720p mode and it uses the 1440x1080i format exlusively, then it is not a true HDV camcorder according to specs.

But of course its image quality will be HD. But keep in mind that reducing the horizontal resolution to 1440 is not a big deal. The resolution is still superior to 1280x720p and far superior to SDTV.

One concern about the resolution loss is that it is not a natively 16:9 resolution. This is a big deal, because it indicates that the CCD will be 4:3 and the video will be anamorphically squeezed to widescreen. This is similar to what High Resolution CCDs like the PDX-10 and Optura Xi/300 do now with DV's 720x480 format (a 4/3 resolution with non-square pixels).

Concerning the issue of wanting progressive video. Think of it like this: If you want progressive using a 1080i format, just separate fields and select even/odd and resize to 16:9 EDTV resolution. You will get 960x540 in true progressive (no interlaced artifacts or field blending). Of course this is perfect for DVD production, the benefits of HDTV are mostly lost (except for increased detail, sharpness, lower noise, etc).

So its what best fits your needs really. The previous JVC 1280x720p is best for high motion filming (sports), but the increased resolution of 1440x1080i is significant enough to warrant its use for most cases.

Edited:

I just read that Sony's pro HDCAM also has 1440 horizontal pixels? And the chroma is subsampled below 4:2:2?

Here's the link:
http://videoexpert.home.att.net/artic3/262hdvr.htm

The resolution is still superior to 1280x720p and far superior to SDTV.

Even comparing 1080i to 720p will bring about much debate as each have their own strengths. I prefer 720p just because I use a HTPC and my TV is native 768p. 720p may have fewer dots and lines but it handles motion much better with no artifacts (temporal resolution). 1080i is best with static images for delivering its full resolution potential (spatial resolution).

The following is from Joe Kane of http://www.videoessentials.com.

The whole idea of television is to have moving pictures. And since there is usually motion, the average resolution is always going to be well below 1080. It's rare that the picture would ever reach a resolution of 1080. Calculations based on average motion mean vertical resolution is going to be somewhere around 635 lines. It's not a numerical average because what determines the actual resolution is the amount of motion. But 720p has a solid 720 lines all the time. I believe 720p is a better direction for the time being.

Very interesting Johann, Tommy, thanks for all the insight.

Love this place. And can't wait to get my hands on one of these new cams and see what their video looks like on the right monitor!

Wow! I guess all you folks already have your Hi Def televisions?

Anyway, here is some additional information: http://tinyurl.com/3cbnl

The wife says "no" until they come down substantially in price. But she did give two thumbs up on the home theater, so it ain't all that bad around this house.