Barry_Green
Moderator
Because it'll never get better, it'll only get worse. So if you're operating on the premise of "garbage in, garbage out" you have to expand that to include the broadcast chain's decimation, so it's more a case of "Beautiful in, mediocre out. Mediocre in, dog poop out." So if you're starting with a pre-aliased mess, then the final outcome would be "pre-aliased mess in, massive disaster out".
The BBC looked at the zone plate from the 5D and decided it wasn't even worth evaluating the camera any further, as just from those results alone it was ruled out as being worthy of broadcasting. But the BBC has also said (using the same methodology) that XDCAM-EX is not "HD", and neither is Super16 film. They demand a certain fidelity of signal at the start of the imaging chain, in order to have enough left over at the end that it still looks good enough and worthy of BBC standards.
But I still think a DVX is plenty fine if your targeted distribution is standard-def DVD.
So you have to decide what your standards are, what your target market is, and what your tolerance level is for having video that's potentially problematical along the way. If you're making indie films for distribution on vimeo, I think all the rules are out the window and there's absolutely nothing wrong with shooting on a Flip HD, an HV20, or a 7D or whatever you want. But if it's for broadcast, or for stock footage sale, then it makes a huge difference as to whether your footage is inherently compromised or not.
And, frankly, that depends on your assessment of your target market and what you want to provide to them. I would say it's a fair guess that a good half the market can't tell when 4:3 footage is being stretched out horizontally to 16:9. I actually think the number is probably much higher than half, but I've observed enough people who are watching distorted 4:3 on their HDTVs *and don't seem to even know it* that I'm pretty confident in saying that people don't care when their image is stretched out by 33%.
So the next thing I have to ask is -- if that's the standard you are thinking of catering to, then why does it really matter what you shot on? It is completely true that the general public doesn't seem to notice aliasing and moire and compression mud and stuff like that. We've been trained to accept fuzzy analog television reception!
I think you always do yourself a favor when you preserve the highest possible quality in your content creation. If it's going to be compromised down the chain by factors that are out of your control, well, there's not much you can do about that...
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