Well I am bored and found this interesting, so here I go rambling on.

To expand on what Kevin said, the reason a laptop can't handle uncompressed HD is the disks are too slow. WAY too slow.

The Expresscard slots are definitely fast enough to handle HD-SDI Dual Link or pretty much anything you could have done with PCI-X cards. Whether or not anyone actually does it, who knows. My guess is no, because laptops would need a second PC Expresscard slot with Fiber channel going out to a fast RAID array. By the time you include this array... well you don't really have a portable setup anymore, so why bother with the laptop.

The same goes for small "Shuttle" computers and Mac Mini's... they just can't handle the disks for this application.

Take a look at the Wafian HR-1, which can record compressed Cineform 10bit video data. It has 4 500GB drives in a RAID 10 or RAID 0 configuration. Of course that's presently $17,000 USD.

Alternatively take a look at an Apple XServe which can handle two PCI Express 8X cards and has storage for up to 2.25TB. Add in a Blackmagic or AJA I/O card and fill it up with drives and RAM and you have a nifty solution that should handle uncompressed 10 bit HD - just barely. (190MBps for sustained read/write on a 3 disk RAID 0) While its a bit of a kludge it is certainly cheaper than the Wafian solution.

It'll be a while before we get uncompressed HD on anything truly mobile.

The Cineform codec is a good example of a system that might get into laptops soon with a RAID 0 setup. (using two laptop drives) I like Avid DNxHD better which for a 10bit 4:2:2 profile which requires 28MBps. We can do that today in a laptop. The next step is to use native HDCAM SR in a 10 bit 4:4:4 profile which runs at 440Mbps (55MBps), which leaves us back at the RAID 0 laptop. A single desktop SATA can barely handle HDCAM SR... of course I am talking about the 10000RPM Raptors, so a RAID 0 of two or more should do it readily.

I mention being able to "barely" capture some of these systems. I mean that I am assuming contiguous capture on a nearly empty drive so we get nearly optimum sustained write performance. You certainly can't count on that being the case- especially not on a laptop where you typically have only one drive available for everything- but its theoretically possible.

Well I don't know that I have anything insightful at all to add other than blabbering the obvious... so I'll quit for now.

A1 v G1
 

I use an XM2 which does everything i need. I film mostly Horse shows, Dressage, Jumping, That sort of thing for family and some commissioned work. Mostly hobbyist,some movie of the grandchildren. You know how it is.
Going HD is a WANT thing. Its the A1 FOR ME. Now, where can I pawn my soul?

If you buy one, come on down to Wellington, Florida and make a mint shooting polo and other horse events.

hwm

Great idea Heath. The UK's biggest Polo fest happens just 20 miles from my home. Better go and get some shooting practice.

Cool, hope to see you here some day!

heath

i was gonna pre-order mine

but BH stopped processing orders until tomorrow night.

=\

The poll says it all. I do some multi-cam from time to time and still would consider two A1's before one G1. I'm so used to sync up manually anyway.
I have a XL-1 so for very critical stuff like drama I can use the SDI out in a one-cam setup.

I think it's great though that we now have a line of three cameras to choose from with the same great image.

A1 all the way. It's the best option for a psudo-starving college kid like myself.

Letting those of you know who are having trouble with B&H that I just pre-ordered mine through Scott Cantrell (a DV member) at Tapeworks.

If that's all you do and you want hd you should get an fx1 or fx7, what would you need 24p for?

The lens is pretty impressive on both of these bad boys(A1 & G1); finally!!! I saw manually controllable iris opening. If you ask me, it was long due…
G1 for me
Vic

I don't get your post Victor. We've had manually controllable irises for very many years on Canon camcorders.

What Victor meant was probably a manual iris RING, which wasn't on the CAnon camcorders, exept for their 14x manual lens.

I wouldn't call it a "Manual" iris ring...

I am sure it is electronic with those stupid "Non existent" ends... however, it is in a better place than the click wheel on the XL2

I expect no better control from it than from the one on the body of the XLh1. However it's location will make it a lot more convenient and it may feel smoother. Still, in the end I expect the same outcome in the footage.

Tom, the posts after yours pretty much clarified what I meant, but I'd like to further stress that it is very convenient (for me, anyway) when the iris is controlled directly from the lens ring and not from the small click ring on a camcorder. On xl2 it is rather inconvenient, and on xl-h1 it's little better, but, in my opinion, not good enough.
Vic