VTR Compatability

[Rocketeer]

Fly half way around the world and forget to ask the important questions...

The Sony HVR-M10U makes no mention of the ability to playback 720p/24p/25p material so I assume that it can't?

The JVC BR-HD50U:

The unit supports signals that are recorded in 720 24p, 25p, 30p and 480/60p HDV™, and 480/60i and 24p DV. A front panel 8-digit LED provides display of time code, user bits and VTR status. With its built-in HDV™ decoder, it has the ability to convert 720p MPEG2 recordings to 1080/60i or 480/60i for monitoring purposes.

Does this mean it can playout 1080i material aquired on the Z1? or is it a deck for each HDV variant?

[ChuckS]

Barry speaks to this issue and provides an intelligent overview at http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=25397

[Barry_Green]

They're bit-stream incompatible. You get one or the other. You cannot play the competitor's HDV through firewire and digitize it.

Both decks can play the other format through analog outputs, but if you want to be able to digitize, you have to pay your money and make your choice, because you can only get one or the other format (or, get two decks, one deck from each manufacturer, if you need compatibility with both variants of HDV).

The JVC deck seems like a much more well-rounded product, in that it supports ProHD and JVC HDV, and can record to and play back large cassettes. However, none of that does you a bit of good if you're shooting/working with Sony HDV.

Also, the Sony deck has no component input, so you couldn't use it to record the analog output of the JVC either. I don't know if the JVC deck has analog component input or not.

[Rosestar]

You have to be sh**ting me! You mean that the Sony deck will not play JVC HDV and JVC will no play the Sony HDV?

And people are talking smack about Panasonic being prepriatory!!!