There has been a lot of complaining about P2 adding a lot to the cost of shooting hd vs out of the box cost of hdv even though all agree that DVCPro HD is a far superior compression format. But if you consider that as yet there are no $500 hdv consumer cams to use as playback decks and would have to buy a pro deck for serious work, the advantages swing strongly to the pany. Format wars are already starting in hdv with the sony and jvc formats incompatible even if recorded on the same tape, so if you are primarily an editor for other shooters you would need decks for both formats taking up space on your edit desk and bleeding big bucks from your margins. wouldn't you rather just have a nice little pc card reader?
So the only real disadvantage is record time, but if you're going to be recording non-stop for more than fifteen minutes you're most likely locked off and can stream to a laptop until you run out of hard-drive space.
So the only real disadvantage is record time, but if you're going to be recording non-stop for more than fifteen minutes you're most likely locked off and can stream to a laptop until you run out of hard-drive space.