HDTV : HDV : How popular now?

Nobody has replied yet. That makes me think that others have come to the same conclusion as have I. If you're doing a school project, you should do the research yourself, not ask others to do it for you. You should be able to find pretty well all you need just by reading in these forums.

I'm quite curious too. Everyone seems to have gone HD mad since the launch of the Sony FX1. Isn't it going to be a good few years before it has much affect on the average bloke in the street. How long before I can produce a HD project on some kind of disc and hand it to any old geezer and expect him/her to take it home and happily view it in all it's glory.

P.S. can some do a glossary of all the H formats?

I know very well that I must do myself.
But I want to get some idia from the people who work about digital VDO editing.

Firstly you may like to read two threads in "Chatter" - "HDTV in Europe" and "HDTV progress abroad" and you'll see that some of us were saying quite a lot about HD well before the FX1 was even announced! The second of those threads especially contains a lot of general information about the different formats (and some historical ones, 441 lines, anybody?) but I believe Mr Roberts will soon be producing the definitive FAQ on the subject.

Regarding the question you ask, well, next year I'd be prepared to bet the majority of TVs in peoples homes will still be SD, and probably analogue PAL, but everything has to start somewhere. In five years, I'd expect the scene to be different. My guess would be a lot of HD capable screens in peoples homes, and a lot of moaning to the terrestial broadcasters about why is their transmitted quality so poor? Why do our Blu-Ray discs, home videos and video games look so much better than "Eastenders"? And in ten years time, I think HD might be starting to become the norm. I base my guesses on other technologies - DVD is now more significant than VHS, but from relatively slow beginnings some years ago, and that applies to many comparable technologies.

What I think it means for the here and now is that if you want your material to have maximum impact in years to come, you really need to think very hard about HD now. In the UK we have seen how positive the uptake has been in the US, even though the technology is only just starting to mature. If anyone thinks that everyone has gone HD mad since the FX1 launch, just wait until we start to hear more about Skys HD launch later this year. I believe that alone must have really rattled the terrestial broadcasters, and would love to be a fly on the wall of some rooms in the BBC.

And poptha2003 - if you use any of our writings in your project, can you let us know what marks we get? :D :D

Short answer is not vey popular for now. That does not mean there is no interest. There is a lot of interest among the professional community and some interest from amateurs like me.

But it will be a long time before I buy HDV or HD products. The transition will be expensive as it will require a new HD or HDV capable cam, a much faster pc, lots more hard drive storage, HD capable monitor and an HD capable DVD format for distribution. With Edius I already have an HDV capable nle but I use it with a Storm card, not OHCI, so I would need to add one or upgrade to an NX card. So for me a change to HDV or HD means a commitment to significant expenditure. Meantime I am more than happy with my Panasonic GS400 which shoots using miniDV tapes (for video) and SD cards (for stills).

It may not be too long before it's not possible to buy anything other than HD capable products, as we're starting to see signs in the professional world. (How many SD only cameras were on the Sony stand at Video Forum?!) Same goes for big screen sales in the High Street. But drgagx is right, a lot of people will not upgrade overnight, and DV editing is still far easier than HDV at the moment. What we're seeing now is a pointer to the future, just as DVD was ten (?) years ago. I remember when VHS/Betamax machines were quite a novelty, and most people didn't see much likelihood of them becoming too popular......

I agree with the sentimemts above that the average person in the street will not engage with HD probably until they next replace their main TV. With large LCD screens falling rapidly in price, there won't be a market for CRT monsters soon. When sky really pushes HD beyond the early adopter market, it will find these new display households.
As far as self produced video goes, I think that the opportunity presented by cameras like the FX1 and any of its successors that follow in the coming months/years, lies in establishing HD footage that will be appreciated much more than SD in the future. How many events have been recorded with equipment of 'average (and mediocre)' contemporary standards, when better was available. If the chance to capture the moment with the best practical quality available is missed, it will be lost forever. For example, 10 year old VHS footage may evoke nostalgia, but a DV record from the mid-nineties is still highly acceptable even today.

Steve

At the Video Forum this year, Sony told me that bthey had orders for very many Z1 waiting for delivery, certainly in the many hundreds. It seems to have been the most eagerly awaited camcorder ever produced by any manufacturer.

Even if HDV is superceded by hard disk or solid state recording in the near future, I think that the front end of the FX1/Z1 may be life-extended by the use of Firestore type storage, therby removing the two potential disadvantages of HDV i.e. tape dropouts and capture time (for those in a hurry).
I would imagine that DV will fade away, starting with low-end point and shoot camcorders. The video snapshot market will be met by improved video facilities on digital still cameras, using memory sizes rising above 1GB to store tens of minutes of MPEG4 footage.
So for any material that will be edited for serious use or archiving, HDV would seem a good capture medium.

Steve

Just taking a quick look at your figures Steve:

A DV 60-minute tape holds an hour, and is 13GBytes long. So 1GByte of storage can hold 60/13=4.6 minutes of conventional DV. MPEG4 can deliver vthat quality at about 4Mbits/second (0.5MBytes/second), so a 1GByte card could hold 2,000 seconds or 33 minutes of video.

Hi,

I agree, I think we need to move away from tape drives and tape for HDV to succeed.

Jim Bird.

Alan,

I wasn't thinking that 1GB is necessarily enough, just that with flash now available from about 30ukp per GB, it won't be long before 4 or even 8 GB will be less than 100 ukp, and then it will be possible to take enough media on holiday to get about an hour of sub-DVD quality footage that probably matches a low-cost lens/coder combination. I think that the style gurus will aim such extended still cameras at the holiday photo/video users. Anything more serious will be addressed by successors to current 3 chip DV camcorders, maybe 3 x 1/4 sensor HD models.

Steve

For the first time ever, a home user can (at least in theory.... ;) ) technically get a far higher quality television picture from his own equipment than he can currently receive from mainstream broadcasters, at least in the UK. No wonder there's excitement. Up until now, con/prosumer equipment has been playing catch up to broadcast TV - with qualifications, it can be argued that with the FX1/Z1 it has now exceeded it. How would you say the public reaction to the Z1 matches that of the VX1000, Alan?

EXACTLY, for the first time ever, Joe Public can make and show home videos that are sharper and have more pixels than the broadcasters can. The pictures, however, might not actually be better in many respects, simply because good broadcast cameras can be setup in many different ways for different effects. For example, much of BBC drama is now shot on HDTV using Sony HDW750 or Panasonic Varicam, and then downconverted. Those cameras are truly wonderful as far as I'm concerned, because I can dive into the menus and tweak the performance to get what the DoPs want, and the results of that shine through even when downconverted (things like not clipping off overloads, details in blacks, freedom from heavy detail enhancement). So, the broadcasters still have an advantage over the consumers in terms of the way the original scene is captured, but the consumer has the advantage of not having to down-convert (assuming he has a display that can handle the standard without mangling it in a scaler like in most plasmas or lcds).

My personal opinion about Z1 is that it isn't a pro camera, it's a consumer camera with some pro connectivity, I've made that plain a few times. But, it's affecting broadcasters in much the same way that the DSR range did. Z1 and it's followers will displace DV and DVCAM in broadcast very quickly. We'll see a benefit quickly because they'll be shooting native 16:9, so they can throw away all the anamorphic lenses. For the broadcasters, this is a real no-brainer, they can shoot HD at the cost of SD and produce SD from it at no worse quality than they would from equivalent SD shooting, while having the potential of selling the original content as HD.