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

The Sony camera pictured....
 

..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:

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...