DVCPro

H

hudbl

Member
Perhaps i'm being stupid but wouldn't it make more sense to use DVCPro cassettes and scrap the miniDV completely?

Whilst i'm sure P2 is excellent, by the time the costs come down and capacity goes up to somewhere near realistic for users, won't it be time to replace the HVX200?

I currently use the DVX100 and i'm sure a lot of people like myself would end up going for the Sony or JVC purely because it can record to tape. HDV's inferior to DVCPro HD, but still better than miniDV.
 
Apparantly the cost of the recording mechanism and the 16 heads required to record DVCproHD would have knock the price upwards. In addition, based on many messages on this board, even the P2 cards as priced now isnt expensive when you take into account cost savings on tapes and other workflow elements.

And when do you think you will replace the HVX - i dont htink a new higher HD standard will come out for a long long time
 
I didn't realise there would be a big difference in the mechanism.

As for the cost of P2, i'm one of the poor people, guess i need more clients! I just thought a DVCPro cassette would offer people like me an in between option and wipe away any thoughts of getting a Sony or JVC.
 
The DVCPRO-HD tape mechanism would add somewher around $21,000 to the cost of that $6,000 camera. So no, not a cost-effective option. And then DVCPRO-HD tape costs about a dollar per minute -- so it's actually cheaper to store your footage on hard drives!

The brilliance of P2 is that it lets us have access to that $21,000 format, on a $5995 camera. Yes the cards are expensive (for now). But even if you got the camera loaded with two cards, that's a $9995 package (at retail), which is giving you 720/60p (only possible on the $70,000 VariCam), and 1080/60i (the cheapest DVCPRO-HD camera that does that is the $42,500 HDX400) and 1080/24p (you can't get that in any format for under $100,000). So put into context, a $9995 package with nearly-infinitely-reusable cards is quite a bargain...
 
Isn't there a way they can record higher data rate onto a cheaper tape though? How much can you squeeze onto 6mm DV tape? Or like I said in another post, how about older 8mm video tape?

I obviously realise this isn't going to happen with the HVX, but I wonder what Pany will do with cheaper HD cameras, P2 is definitely not an option for consumers! I doubt they would be developing a new tape format, as that would be dead before it was born, but what can be done with the old ones? Maybe optical disks are the way to go? Sony seems to think so!

Has Pany got an anser to HDV? I would like to see a 40 - 50 Mbit/s interframe HD compression, I reckon that could look pretty damn good - probably could surpass DVCPRO HD.
 
but I wonder what Pany will do with cheaper HD cameras, P2 is definitely not an option for consumers!
Click to expand...
Probably not. But then again, if a consumer market for HD does develop, Panasonic could always just start making HDV cameras. So far consumers have shown very little interest in anything to do with HD, it's taken 7 years for HDTV sets to penetrate up to the current level of market acceptance, which is about 7% of US households.

There's a tremendously higher level of interest for HD among content creators, than there is among consumers. Consumers care more about getting a flat LCD TV than they do about getting HD (although, more and more, they are getting both -- as more and more of the in-demand LCD TVs and Plasmas are also HD-capable).

So far I don't know that there needs to be an answer to HDV. But if the time comes that consumers start wanting HDV cameras, Panasonic'll just produce HDV cameras. However, I don't believe they'll ever try to produce an HDV camera from the professional/broadcast division -- that's not gonna happen. HDV is not a professional format. Panasonic's take on it is that professionals need quality, not cheap $4 tapes, and they're not going to compromise on the quality of the footage -- they'll go so far as to invent something like P2 just to make sure that they can deliver the full quality with no compromises.
 
Barry_Green said:
they'll go so far as to invent something like P2 just to make sure that they can deliver the full quality with no compromises.
Click to expand...

Hey come on, there are some serious compromises to P2: Price and record time! They are BIG issues for most potential HVX customers. I am not saying HDV is a better solution for everyone, but I think a better compromise could have been made - Surely with modern technology we could record 40-50Mbit/s to tape cheaply. Maybe for more than HDV, but cheaper than P2. Mix that bandwidth with a modern interframe compression and it would look fantastic!

I think that Pany has been scared away from that solution because of the "tape is dead" movement. Sony seems to have gone with the "solid state is still too expensive" camp and produced a bit of a temporary solution in HDV. HDV is nearly there, but has some compression issues. P2 has price issues.

The interesting thing now that the HD100 is out is that nobody has mentioned the heavy compression. It certainly looks good on the footage I have seen. The camera head is causing more issues. 4:2:2 would be nicer though!
 
Barry_Green said:
So far consumers have shown very little interest in anything to do with HD, it's taken 7 years for HDTV sets to penetrate up to the current level of market acceptance, which is about 7% of US households.
Click to expand...

Actually, according to Display Search's Quarterly TV Shipment and Forecast Report, North America had an HDTV penetration total of 26% in Quarter 1 of 2005, Japan had an HDTV penetration total of 24%, and even China had an HDTV penetration rate of 3%. See: http://www.displaysearch.com/press/pr.html?id=362

It's now Quarter 3 of 2005, so those figures are undoubtedly higher. A 4/15/05 quote from Consumer Electronics Association: "Digital television, particularly HDTV (high-definition television) remains the fastest-growing segment of the consumer electronics industry, driven by strong consumer demand for flat-panel and rear-projection HDTV products," said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro.

The recent drop in price of plasma panels and emergence of larger LCD TVs has changed the dynamic of HDTV sales, in turn bring down the price of rear projection HDTV sets.
 
I’m SO glad the half-dozen other hundred-post threads on this topic didn’t in any way deter people from hashing it out again . . .

hudbl, please do a search. It’s been covered at length.
 
I'd like to see updated numbers from the CEA; the most optimistic estimates I've *ever* heard for US market penetration were 10%, with most saying 5%.

Now, perhaps they're not specifying the difference between HD-Ready and HD-Built-In. Maybe the 7% figure was referencing those with tuners or some other ability to actually watch HD; maybe the 26% figure is referring to any device that can accept an ATSC signal (most EDTV plasmas, etc., can take a 720p or 1080i signal, they just display it in 480). Heck, I've had an old Sony Cineza projector for a couple of years that can accept 1080i or 720p and downconvert to display on its SD-rez projection... if they want to call that "high def", I can see how it would inflate the numbers.

Maybe the base has grown a little since the 7% figure, maybe it's at 8% or 9% now. But I can't understand how they'd claim 26%! That's fully four times as much as everything I looked up back in January/February...
 
Barry_Green said:
I'd like to see updated numbers from the CEA; the most optimistic estimates I've *ever* heard for US market penetration were 10%, with most saying 5%.

Now, perhaps they're not specifying the difference between HD-Ready and HD-Built-In. Maybe the 7% figure was referencing those with tuners or some other ability to actually watch HD; maybe the 26% figure is referring to any device that can accept an ATSC signal (most EDTV plasmas, etc., can take a 720p or 1080i signal, they just display it in 480). Heck, I've had an old Sony Cineza projector for a couple of years that can accept 1080i or 720p and downconvert to display on its SD-rez projection... if they want to call that "high def", I can see how it would inflate the numbers.

Maybe the base has grown a little since the 7% figure, maybe it's at 8% or 9% now. But I can't understand how they'd claim 26%! That's fully four times as much as everything I looked up back in January/February...
Click to expand...


That sounds like they are refering to 26% INCREASE IN SALES, over current sales.
That is much different from percentages of households having it.
 
Out of curiousity, has anyone ever seen DVCPRO 50 footage shot with a 1/3 inch CCD camera? For those who will only go to SD and not HD, this might be the feature they use the most. True, you still have to buy P2 cards, but you can get a lot longer of running times compared to HD making P2 a little more convenient.
 
Yes most tv is 480 sets. Even in europe I see a lot of plasma displays with just 480. Just recently the 1366x768 sets have gone up in great numbers.

Most people that buy flat Tvs aren´t that intrested in the technology like we are. They just want a flat tv with big picture for a nice price. HDTV ready sounds cool to. That the tv can´t show PAL DVD at full res is something that many people don´t get.

p.s. Has there ever been a 1/3 cam with DVCPRO50? And shooting 25P in 720 is the same space as shooting 25P in SD. 50mbs (PAL model)
 
There is definitely a price issue with P2. However, it is only a very short term issue; and it is still good news relative to other alternatives. I am happy with P2 option. We have already decided to get two HVX200 without P2. We hope to get P2 cards in the future when price is right and 16/32 gigs are available.

I was wondering why not use a DVD as storage media? Or writing to DVD is too slow to accomplish anything? or is it because of its size limitation?
 
its slow, and has a high chance for error when you stick it in a moving camera that gets jostled around and is prone to condesation in temperature changes.. its hard enough to be able to read an optical disk thats in a portable player .. let alone reliably writing to one with a protable writer.. although some cameras DO record to optical disk.. its not the best way.
 
LearningVideo said:
There is definitely a price issue with P2. However, it is only a very short term issue; and it is still good news relative to other alternatives. I am happy with P2 option. We have already decided to get two HVX200 without P2. We hope to get P2 cards in the future when price is right and 16/32 gigs are available.

I was wondering why not use a DVD as storage media? Or writing to DVD is too slow to accomplish anything? or is it because of its size limitation?
Click to expand...

Sony seem to be going towards optical disk drives for their Pro cameras:

Check this out...

DVD's are used in quite a few consumer cams already, but the capacity is too limited to be that useful for professionals, especially with mini-DVD discs. Plus there are all the problems that iamloser mentioned.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top