4:2:2 has nothing to do with 10-bit.
I know that 4:2:2 has nothing to do with 10-bit, and that was fairly clear by the comment "Even on cheap AVCHD camcorders, HDMI is 4:2:2." As to 10-bit being nonexistent on low-cost camcorders because it "costs," that's kind of tautological -- it costs more because it costs more. That's another way of saying manufacturers have put 8-bit HDMI on cheaper cameras and 10-bit on their more expensive cameras to differentiate between the two. Does it really cost thousands more for the 10-bit circuitry than the 8-bit, or is it more like a few dollars? Other than "that's the way they've done it" I've seen no explanation as why there's no 10-bit on cheaper cameras, especially no specific cost analysis. So when I said there's no reason there can't be 10-bit HDMI, I should have said there's no good reason. I think that if consumers were given the option of spending a hundred or two more for a model if it had 10-bit HDMI, many would.
Well... see, that's the thing -- I doubt they would, or the manufacturers would have figured it out and done that. They are massive corporations with huge marketing departments who spend tons of money to figure out what it is that their customers want, and who do their very best to extract every dollar they possibly can from us. If 10-bit HDMI was viewed as a moneymaker, it'd be everywhere already.
I'd define a 'consumer' as someone not even knowing about '10bit-HDMI'.
But that's just it. The manufacturers know that for at least 99.9% of consumers, the extra 2 bits wouldn't matter, so even if it wouldn't cost a lot extra, it wouldn't be a moneymaker. And I didn't argue it would be.
People who know that 10-bit HD-SDI, though preferable, is even less likely than the cheaper HDMI. And on smallish cameras, where real estate is at a premium, another port may be unlikely. But if you already have HDMI, why not have it serve double duty (monitoring and recording)? That appears to be the logic behind the Atomos Ninja. And then there's the question, if no one wants 10-bit HDMI, why has the spec supported up to 16 bits per channel since version 1.3, released in 2006?
But even more unlikely than 10-bit HDMI. As noted, HDMI is nearly ubiquitous. Since cost is a factor, it would probably be less costly to implement 10-bit HDMI than HD-SDI. I -- and I assume many others -- would accept 10-bit HDMI if it were the only 10-bit alternative at a low cost.
My recollection was that Jan Crittenden said it would have cost thousands to add AVC-Intra and P2 support, not 10-bit encoding to the HD-SDI. But even that appears to be somewhat untrue. The HPX250, which was projected to cost less than $6,500, could, by your own estimate, actually come in closer to $5,500, if the pricing of the AF100 is any indicator. That would make it only $500 more than the AF100, yet the HPX250 has a more complex imaging block with three, albeit smaller, chips rather than one; a long-range, video-optimized zoom lens vs. no lens on the AF100 (at least until recently, when the stock 14-140 GH2 zoom was included); 10-bit HD-SDI and HDMI vs. 8-bit; 10-bit 4:2:2 AVC-Intra vs. 8-bit 4:2:0 AVCHD; and P2 recording vs. SD.
I do believe that the manufacturer is indeed "uniquely qualified as the only entity in the world who can authoritatively answer the question." But they are also motivated to charge as much as they can for as long as they can. They alone get to decide what technology they include in their offerings or how much they charge. But, no, I have never read how much exactly it would cost to them to add 10-bit HDMI to a new design (rather than revamp an old design in midstream). Nor would they likely ever divulge that information. It's not any great conspiracy, but I suspect that the cost would be far less than thousands.
Really? I think many are far more knowledgeable than you give them credit for. Maybe you're right about the majority, but there's an increasing segment who works in raw on their DSLRs and who know and care about specs.
Okay, but then ... if it costs more and wouldn't apply to 99.9% of their customers, then -- they've just needlessly given up a whole lot of profitability or market share... so why would they do it?
Because it's terrible for recording. Especially when you go to the mini-HDMI connector. It's just ... not acceptable. It's asking HDMI to do a job that it was never designed to do. HDMI is designed to sit on your desktop or in a piece of furniture, on an undisturbed device, connected to an un-moving monitor or television. Pull your camera out, put it on the coffee table, and show your relatives your home movies, that sort of thing.
The Ninja is a product that garnered a lot of excitement, but for reasons that I think have to do more with customers not understanding things, than anything else. Who wants a Ninja? DSLR users. And the Ninja doesn't work worth a fig with a DSLR because no DSLR puts out a signal that's worth recording. Only the GH2 comes close. What does the Ninja work well with? Consumer video cameras, HDV camcorders, things like that -- as in, the things nobody's using anymore. Actually the ideal match for the Ninja would be the Sony FS100, because it's saddled with only HDMI output. I think once the Samurai comes on the market, the excitement about the Ninja will fade quite a bit as people start to look towards the more practical alternative.
Because of what it was introduced to support -- graphics cards. Computers. Videogame systems like the XBOX and the PS3. Remember, HDMI is a revision of DVI, which was the computer graphics standard for years.
Well, yes, 10-bit HD-SDI would cost more than 10-bit HDMI, but the part you're glossing over is that most of that cost is in converting all the internals to run at 10 bits! That is, as I understand it, the expensive part. You need 10-bit processing and more RAM and all that, all the way through the signal chain. Faster processors, more complex DSP, everything is quite a bit more complicated in dealing with 10-bit.
But that's where the cost comes from. I mean, I railed upon the factory when we had the Osaka tour. I had an hour to rant at them about the things they got wrong and what we expected from them, and I hit them hard about the lack of P2. And they said that it would cost too much. And I pointed out that the cost difference between an HPX170 and HMC150 was, at that time, $500. So yeah, spend $500, and give me P2. And they pointed out that no, that's just a slot and a long-long-ago cost-collateralized codec chip. But a P2 product today needs AVC-Intra. And AVC-Intra requires 10-bit architecture throughout. And that's the part that would cost. At least, that's the way I remember it.
Yes, but -- the HPX250 appears to be repurposing the guts from the already established (and probably cost-recouped) HPX300 and HPX370. And the HPX250 is a substantially larger camera than the AF100, so there's room in it to fit those various things. And it will probably sell 5x to 10x as many as the AF100. The HPX250 is a general-purpose unit that will probably be snacked up by the hundreds in TV stations around the world, whereas the AF100 is a specialist indie-cinema camera. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the HPX250 outsold the AF100 by massive amounts. Not likely to us film-heads here on DVXUser, but to the rest of the video world, it's a hugely appealing package.
True, but by the time the HPX250 comes out, almost six years will have elapsed since the HVX200 cost $5995... that's a lot of time, and a lot of moore's law, to factor in. Plus, the HVX200 was all-new technology from the ground up, the first handheld P2 camera, their first 1/3" HD camcorder, etc... the HPX250 is leveraging off the 2.5-year history of the HPX300/370, so it should cost a little less than if it was an all-new-from-the-ground-up design.
Well, again, there's nothing we can do about it. You can "buy the argument" or not, but for whatever reasons, those reasons are what they are and the only statements we have as to why it would be expensive, are that it would be converting to 10-bit and adding AVC-Intra. Plus adding HD-SDI; Canon charges $1,000 to $1,200 more for their XF305 and XF105, as compared to their XF300 and XF100, and the additional cost covers the timecode, genlock, and HD-SDI ports. I don't know how much to attribute to each part, but it would seem reasonable to expect that just adding SDI to a fairly-low-volume camcorder would cost $400 or more.
Maybe so. But when? If it comes out three years after the AF100 came out, then the whole Moore's Law comes into play again. It should be obvious that the sooner it comes out, the more expensive it will be, and the longer it takes to come out, the less expensive it could be.
Well, again, we don't know, and we can't know. And component cost is one of the minorest factors in deciding how much something costs the end customer. Design, R&D, licensing, patenting, legal fees, software development, support issues, that all comes into play. Adding 10-bit would likely mean having to develop a whole new recording system -- or, has anyone noticed, the only 10-bit HD recording codec on the market is still AVC-Intra? What would they record to? You're not going to get a cheapo AVCHD codec and put it in there, because AVCHD doesn't support 10 bits. MPEG-2? Nope, not gonna happen, no version of Sony's MPEG-2 supports 10 bits. So now they would have to design a new recording format too. And test it, and then get all the NLE manufacturers to support it, and on and on and on.
So when does Shogun with both HDMI and SDI input arrive