what is the final picture quality difference between my XL2 and say a high end sony Digibeta camera?

Is the XL2 Really broadcast quality?

and what is the XL2 4:1:1 or 4:2:2 colour sampling in the U.K?

any help will be great.

Broadcast quality is whatever gets put on TV -- and lots of different kinds of quality gets put on TV (all that "video phone" material used on CNN during the war, or the video diary material that's now a staple of "reality" TV).

The XL2 is more than capable of making video that will look fine on broadcast TV.

I agree, it's image quality is fine enough.

I've seen (I'm not kidding) BetaSP material (2/3 3CCD) mixed with the footage of a small cheap mini dv camcorder (don't know how big the chip was... 1/6, 1/5?) and you couldn't see the difference...

It's all about how you shoot it...

If the XL2 wasn't good enough, then I wouldn't have bought yet another one this week...

XL2 VS. High-end camera?

You mean... XL2 vs. XL2?

The digibeta format itself has less compression and better color resolution than miniDV. This is the most useful if doing greenscreen work. It's also better for color correction (less noise, cleaner secondary color correction).

For PAL DV, color sampling should be 4:2:0. see adam wilt's DV FAQ.

The camera itself:
Probably has less noise in low light.
2/3" CCDs means shallower depth of field
shoulder mount. manual lens, sharp viewfinder, etc. The XL2 kind of has this too.

The camera itself would be slightly better... and possibly have slightly better color accuracy.

People will take the digibeta camera + shooter more seriously because:
The camera looks better/bigger.
The camera is more expensive. People consider expensive to be better.
Anyone who can justify spending the money on a digibeta camera probably knows what they are doing. Anyone can buy an XL2.

That being said, content probably matters more than the differences between the cameras.

Last saturday I was approached by a tv station to produce a couple shows. I said all I had to shoot with was an xl2 and they said that is just fine and they emailed me the prerequisites to meet with it.
So it seems, Peter was right, its what gets put on TV.

I had presented them a 52 minute dvd I made and plenty of the footage was shot with my gl2 and some with a digital 8 and the fellow said much of the footage of that dvd was usable footage.

Several indie-news guys in my area (stringers) use XL2's most previously used Xl1s and some have considered going to XLH1's now that HD is starting to make waves.

It's good enough for the if it bleeds it leeds guys so I don't think that you should be concerned.

ML