An HD idea that Sony would love!!

M

mmm

Veteran
Was just clearing out my study and found a load of video8 tapes.

They are pretty sturdy in design and are, obviously, 8mm instead of DV's 6mm.

Could 8 mm tape be revived for carrying an HD signal at say 50 Mb/s? 50Mb/s would make for a pretty good HDV 1080i/p picture. I know they did similar for Digital 8 - is that 25Mbit/s?? Is it simply the DV codec on different tape?

Basically I was wondering if the 8mm tape could carry a higher bandwidth that DV? If so, you know how much Sony loves their backwards compatibility! :thumbsup:

The bigger tape size wouldn't be a problem in larger pro(sumer) cameras either.

Just an idea, that I am sure would never happen...but could it??
 
I think a much easier way would be to simply create a camcorder that has two DV decks. All you need more is some sort of switch that (i.e.) splits one 100 MB stream into two 50 MB streams.
That way, you could stick to the cheap DV tapes.
All that would happen is that the camera would get bigger and more heavy.
Otherwise I see no downside.
But then, P2 is much more sexy - but also much more expensive.

regards, Oli
 
This could just be a cheap one generation thing...until solid state prices come down, a lot!
 
I agree.
But then, what's bad about cheap one-generation solutions?
If they work out well, you get good results from a cheap solution.

I'd prefer that over a solution that is superior and multi-generation-safe
but so expensive that I have to wait 3 years until the price dropped enough
for me to be able to use it.
 
I heard to write HD onto a tape requires multiple recording heads and that is the price gap between hvx and other pro cameras. I'd rather wait and record onto hdd in the meantime. P2 is amazing and is worth the wait in my opinion...
 
I'm surprised that Sony has not thought of it themselves. They probably did. I suspect that re-tooling for HD 8-mm was more expensive than getting HDV up and running. With HDV, a lot of the costs for research and development were spread over all the members of the consortium. The cost of the mechanics of the cameras is the same. After all, HDV cameras are 95% DV cameras. (if not more). I think that HDV has been developed with a lot of built in economy.
 
I have just heard it said the 25 mbit/s is about the safe maximum for DV tape without risking a lot of dropout. I was thinking maybe 8mm tape could handle a little more and provide a very high quality interframe compression system.
 
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