Mini DV or HDV

[snpx]

the difference is 1-2 f-stops in low light performance, as far as i know.

because of this i am unsure to go hd or stay sd, to buy a dvx100b or a xh-a1.

does anybody know about the improfment of lowlight grain in the 100b revision??

is lowlight quali as good as the sony pd170 now?

please help, i have to make a decision.

thanks

 

[Zim]

It is a given that eventually HD will dominate the market, the only question is whether that will be 2 years, 3 years or 5 years away. If I were a betting man I'd say 2-3 years.

Whether or not it is worth making that leap now depends on what projects you are doing.

When something like the about to be released Canon XH-A1 has a street price comparable to our venerable DVX I believe we'll see the beginning of a big shift to HD shooting, combined with a significant drop in the resale price of cameras like ours.

One big problem with that is bandwidth. I'm sure they are working on it but it will take time. I read if a cable company went with all HD they would have to drop to around 30 stations. I have around 90 now. I would rather have more stations than less for my money. I'm sure I'm not alone. So they need to work out that little problem.

I was just reading Studio monthly and one of the really big things right now is video podcast and video on cell phones. HD doesn't do much good there either.

So my money is probably go with a DVX100 soon.

 

[Sean Michael]

I was just reading Studio monthly and one of the really big things right now is video podcast and video on cell phones. HD doesn't do much good there either.

There's a lot of truth in that observation.

I LOVE the quality of HD. But if your goal is to reach a broad audience, you're probably better off focusing on Internet (YouTube, etc.), iPod, and standard DVD.

 

[Barry_Green]

It is a given that eventually HD will dominate the market, the only question is whether that will be 2 years, 3 years or 5 years away. If I were a betting man I'd say 2-3 years.

When you say "dominate the market", the question I have is: what market?

For professional production personnel? Absolutely, and I think 2-3 years is too long to predict; in many ways the transition is already complete. Even my local news stations in tiny Wilmington NC are shooting on HVXs! But in many other places, such as cable broadcast, HD is still rather in its infancy; I had the opportunity to train a major cable broadcaster on the use of their DVXs because that's what they use. One of the biggest names in all of cable TV, and they shoot their stuff on DVXs. Cable TV is still overwhelmingly SD, although the biggest names (like HBO, ShoTime, Discovery, etc) also have HD.

But for end user adoption? It's going to be more like 10 years before everyone is watching HD. And when I say "everyone" I'm only really referring to the US. HD is not even on the map in southeast Asia (India/Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia/Thailand etc) nor has it even begun in New Zealand, and it's still in extreme infancy in Europe. It's gonna be years and years before people have HDTV sets and HD delivery systems (i.e., an HD disc player or comparable).

So if you're talking about distributing product to end users, it's gonna be an SD-delivery market for a long time to come. But if you're talking about shooting professional product in the USA, SD's days are really numbered.