Hey all,

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make an HD presentation with Sony and BBC experts at Bournemouth University tomorrow evening (sigh). It is free to attend for anyone living nearby!

I have no doubt people will be allowed to ask questions.

What would you guys ask if given the chance?

I have asked my flat mate to ask:

The new HDV cameras do not provide the possibility of shooting in true 24P. Was this a conscious choice by Sony and if so, why?

If you have a better suggestion then please voice them here. I make no promises to whether they will take my mate's question (whatever it may be). In addition, all my uni lectures tend to be made available online (albeit to students only) however they are supposedly not allowing this to be filmed, which is strange and also denies me the possibility of reporting back.

Chris

Good question. You might ask, "I hear there is a new process in Sony Vegas that will convert the HDV footage to 24p. Is this true? If so, what makes the pulldown it uses better?"

Supposedly the BBC have little intention of broadcasting in HD in the foreseeable future. They are recording a great deal of material in HD, however as the UK has in one swift move enforced digital broadcasts and widescreen tvs upon viewers they feel another upgrade would simply annoy us all (and rightly so).

Sky (big, Murdoch owned satellite broadcaster) will indeed lead the way with HD and their sports broadcasts.

An interesting note is how they feel 1080 HD may not even be where England ends up. Instead we could be looking towards Japan with their 4K technology (that's right, 4K). As HD has in fact been around for some time (sure, it's become popular in recent years, however the technology is already well over 10 years old) we could miss out on a whole stage in HD and leap right into the flat-out AMAZING! Obviously all conjecture, but the BBC is the biggest broadcaster in the UK, so I would at the very least take this info to heart.

The Z1 was shown off, and impressed many, many people. In fact, I have been told the low light performance was pretty damn good. All of a sudden this made me feel like a complete prat. Reading these message boards can sometimes detach you from the real world. "HDV is too compressed" , "no 24P, what a waste of time" blah blah blah. Shown in front of a packed out lecture theatre people thought it rocked. Plain and simple. That's all that matters. Sorry, had to get that out of my system!

Unfortunately my question regarding Sony's reluctance to offer progressive scan was not asked. Shame : )