Why not minidv-50 or 100?

[dop16mm]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a tapeless workflow, there is nothing I hate more than digitizing from tape, but there is something to be said for the convenience of tape at the shoot and having a master on the shelf. That said why can't panasonic or sony or jvc just ramp up the transport speed and give us 50 Mbits/s in a 30 min load or even 100 Mbits/s in a 15min load. Don't tell me the tape can't handle it or the heads can't handle it, I shuttle footage all the time in playback. Sure there would be dropouts, so don't remove the p2 slot, but while there is a tape transport why not utilize to the max.

Hi-8 was always fragile and you had to be super careful with it, but that didn't stop sony from doubling the transport speed for digital 8. Now that never became a pro format for obvious reasons, but it just shows that it can be done. It is exactly what they do for dvcpro 50 and HD, why can't it be done with mini-dv? Because the magic number for consumer tape run time is 1 hour, and if they increased the data rate that would be reduced. But the hvx is aimed at a more professional crowd, were 30 minute, 20 minute tapes are more normal. Surely they could pack just enough tape to get 20 minutes of dv100, oh yeah thats an 80 min tape.

[NoahK]

Have a search through the archives. It's more to do with keeping the camera below a certain price point than an anti-tape bias.

[abeljerrod]

The cost of the number of tape heads required to take advantage of DVCPro50 or above would price the camera out of the market they are looking to sell it at. For that price, if you are really needing a DVCPro50 product you can always look at the Panasonic SDX900