HDV and White Balence Questions

[Gohanto]

Hey, not sure if this is the perfect place for this, but hopefully someone can help.

Currently I'm shooting on a Panasonic GS 500 (SD ~$800). The problem I have is that whenever I make DVDs and play them on HDTVs, they always look incredibly pixelated to me. But when I watch Hollywood DVDs on the same TV, I never see any pixels at all.

So my question is, if I get an HV20 (the current camera I would likely be moving to) would that likely solve the problem? Mostly just nervous as I've heard various things about working with HDV footage, like it ends up looking just like an SD camera once burned to DVDs.


Also, one other question, I read about not being able to white balance while shooting. I assume they mean you can't change it mid-shot basically. And in-between takes you can alter it easily? (Just seemed like an odd feature to want, as working on film you can't really color balance the film or add filters mid-shot which would basically be the equivalent of white-balance changes)

Thanks,

[Sacksnack]

I recently re-watched a video I did using my old DVX100a, on a 50 inch plasma, and it looked awesome. I think if you're having pixelation problems you might want to look into how you are encoding your video. There may be a problem along the way that is causing pixelation, and that will be magnified on an HDTV because of the higher resolution. And remember that Hollywood movies start with very high resolution, and proper lighting, and are encoded to DVD using very expensive hardware and software.

As far as white balance, the HV20 can be set, or changed, in between takes, but not while recording.
-Kevin