HD??? Which way to go?

[Diogo Athouguia]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

Could be a regional thing, plus TV broadcasters are just part of the HD camera market these days. In the U.S. most indie HD shooters are using Sony cameras with a secondary number of Panasonic and Canon owners, and I rarely hear any talk about JVC. But that's just a side debate which won't help the original poster make a decision, so enough about that

This regional thing is just the most important event from the EU. Tv broadcasters are the biggest part of the market in Europe, we do not have a big independent production market like in US. There are a lot of talking about JVC, just look at the forum topic numbers. And this side debate can help the poster to decide, if broadcasters or who ever with big budgets decides to invest on a specific camera that's for some reason.

As you say no camera is perfect, but in my opinion Canons have a lot to improve on the ergonomics field. As I said before, it's a stupid issue a camera not being able to focus and zoom at the same time. This would be enought for me to not consider buying one.

[John Bosco Jr.]

Originally Posted by Diogo Athouguia

This regional thing is just the most important event from the EU. Tv broadcasters are the biggest part of the market in Europe, we do not have a big independent production market like in US. There are a lot of talking about JVC, just look at the forum topic numbers. And this side debate can help the poster to decide, if broadcasters or who ever with big budgets decides to invest on a specific camera that's for some reason.

As you say no camera is perfect, but in my opinion Canons have a lot to improve on the ergonomics field. As I said before, it's a stupid issue a camera not being able to focus and zoom at the same time. This would be enought for me to not consider buying one.

The JVC 110 and 200/250 seem like a marked improvement from previous offerings from JVC, but it's hard to get on the JVC bandwagon because of the unreliability of this brand in the past.

In my opinion, if you can't afford the higher end Panasonic HD cameras (varicam, etc - the ones with a tape deck) then 2nd choice would be the new XDCAM EX, next Sony V1U (If you can wait, Sony Z7 and S270 are worth a hard look because interchangeable lens and hybrid recording to both tape and flash drive simutaneously) 3rd choice would be Canon XHA1.

As far as broadcasters are concerned, they like Panasonic's HD choices (the ones with tape decks - HDX900 or Varicam) and of course Sony's HDCam; however, there is a market for the JVC 200/250s because a lot of broadcast stations put so much money into converting to HD that they are having a hard time budgeting $30Gs a unit for a number of ENG cameras. The JVCs fit the budget at just over $10Gs a unit. Since Broadcast here is MPEG 2, 19mb/s, the HDV format isn't swaying some away from JVC.

One thing I have noticed, though. Broadcasters mostly are still using tape. Tapeless is not a good option for Broadcast stations, especially news stations, because of the lack of an efficient archiving method.

Good luck on your choice.

[Robert M Wright]

Originally Posted by Bryan Lawler

Ps. Does anyone know if the Panasonic AG-HPX500 comes with the lens for $10,499.95. The describe on B&H's site doesn't say one way or the other.

That price is without lens. If you click on the "Features" tab of the B&H listing for the camera, on their site, you'll see "Note! This model does not come with a lens."