HDV is as good as it's gonna get for a long while.
(Ignore the rest if you don't wanna hear my rant.
On rant->
Here's my take on the issue...
Users are screaming "Why can't you build a camera with every resolution, feature, format, etc for 5K? You obviously could and you'd sell more cameras."

K....why can't you shoot a wedding, composite 20 tracks of vid, print to DVD and VHS, plus stream it, and while your at it, host it for 90 days, all for what you sold wedding packages for in 1998? Because you are growing your business, growing your experiential maturity, and growing your talent and offerings.
Just like the camera makers.

At some point, the industry has to protect their own. They've got huge expenditures in building a camera. You buy a 5K camera, shoot a 100K feature, you make bazillions (ok, a few thousand) and go shoot another one with no further investment in camera as you grow through the formats and maturity of your craft. If there is no where to step up to....what incentive do the camera manufacturers have?
HDV ain't HD. It's still a 25Mpbs stream at 1080i. But it's the next best thing. It's going to revolutionize parts of the industry. We're already geared up for it, and excited about it. But it's still not a CineAlta or a Viper, both of which are at different ends of the spectrum.
<<-off rant.

Spot,

Would I be correct in assuming that from this statement, " HDV is as good as it's gonna get for a long while."....you would wait for the HDV camera if someone were in the market to buy a camera in the next month or two?

Does the new Sony cam shoot standard def DV like the JVC? If so, because of it's 3 CCD's, wouldn't you have the best of both worlds?

Al

I would wait, yes. I don't know what the Sony will shoot like. I'd wager it's WAY better than the JVC, and yes, it shoots standard def. But the JVC is pretty much a toy, IMO. Takes a LOT to get it looking good. That's the price of being a leader in the industry, everyone else gets to see what you've done wrong.

I 've been thru this exercise in the last 4 days.....since the announcement of the Sony FX1....studying the facts and legends around HDV. I did this, primarily, because I'm waiting for my order for an XL2. After 4 days of hand wringing and hair pulling, beleive me, my girlfriend wishes I'd make up my mind, I've finally decided to go ahead with the XL2 order. There's quite a lot of good reasons for me to NOT invest in HDV at this time, altho', at some time in the future, this is gonna come up again until I decide to do it. Anyway, here's my top 10 reasons not to get into HDV yet:
1-HDV is really a subset of MPEG2. (factoid)
2-MPEG2 is a higher compression than DV (factoid)
3-Higher compression means higher loss on re-encodes, higher CPU workload on renders, longer render time.(caveat: I'm not saying anything about finished quality as compared to DV)
4-regardless of what the pundits are saying, 1024i or 720p(regardless) screams for more RAM if you're using Vegas5...like 2 Gig minimum
5-There is no, no, NO way to distribute HDV unless you down-rez to 720 x 480 and go DV anyway. There's a few DiVX settop players out there, there's NO WMV9 players, yet, and there's no such animal as HD-DVD, yet.
6-This HDV technology is just developing. Yes, Mabel, that means lots of evolutionary changes, fits and starts...remember VHS and beta?
7-Who knows, yet, what the Sony data stream is like. At 25mb/sec, it's gonna be interesting.
8-Sony has conveniently ignored questions about their motion artifacts. That's kinda scary, but waiting a month will reveal all.
9-No one, or very nearly no one, in the US of A has an HDTV, and it's worse in Eurpoe. Try telling a bride that her wedding video comes on a hard disk and she can view it only on her computer, which she can't even figure out how to turn on.
10-Unless you're wanting to shell out more big $$$'s for an HDV deck, paln on using your new Sony toy as a tape deck, too, the DSR's won't work with HDV.

AAND...for bonus points
11- what's up with this archaic NTSC interlaced format? OK, so the pro version will have progressive scan? but, at a rumored price premium of $7K, it's not in MY wallet.

Sony will shorty release decks that handle DV, DVCAM and HDV. I just bought a DSR-11 knowing full well within 6 months it will be 'obsolete'.
One small factor overlooked here that Sony spoke of in their original decision to join the HDV 'Forum'. The mpeg-2 TS data written by HDV is much, much more relaible than DV25. DV25 only provides for minimal error correction within each frame, HDV provides error correction accross groups of frames.
Even if my target was SD, I can see almost no reason not to shoot HDV with this camera and down scale to SD in Vegas. Even after the sample video has been through WMV 9 compression, as SD on DV25 it still holds up pretty damn well.
I'll take issue with some of what SPOT has to say, I'm certain there's a little of the need to protect their investment stuff in what camera manufacturers produce, there's also an aweful lot of good engineering reasons. Just take interchangeable optics. This comes at a big price, not just in additional build cost but at difficulty of use and reliability. Autofocus is pretty hard to drive on an interchangeable lens yet most consummers wouldn't / shouldn't buy a camera without.

Bob.

"5-There is no, no, NO way to distribute HDV unless you down-rez to 720 x 480 and go DV anyway"

How about as WM9, for computer playback on your 1600x1200 monitor?

I just got a widescreen Toshiba laptop that can play WMV9 at 720p for $2k. Dunno why it can't do 1080, but the 3.2Ghz P4 CPU just can't seem to crank it out smoothly. Anyway the 720p looks fantastic on the 1440x900 screen, and I'm going to check it out tonight on a 1024x768 DLP.

Thanks for the top ten Bill, it is food for thought. I know a few people with HDTV's though.

Can you imagine telling a prospective groom, bride, and mother in law that the $2k they just shelled out for a wedding video will be delivered on a hard drive and can only be viewed on their computer? I suspect many brides don't even know how to turn the computer on.

"Can you imagine telling a prospective groom, bride, and mother in law that the $2k they just shelled out for a wedding video will be delivered on a hard drive and can only be viewed on their computer?"

No I would have told them that before they shelled out the $2k. Why would you deliver it on a hard drive instead of a DVD?

I suspect many brides don't even know how to turn the computer on.

Actually, the fact is that there are more women users on the Internet than men. They know how turn on a computer. All of the women I know are perfectly computer literate.

John

I would never deliver a production in such a bleeding edge format unless it was well known and agreed upon beforehand, and the clients understood, desired, and had the equipment for it. And even in that case i would provide a more standard DV version as well ... just in case.

The most recent project i did had a format distribution of about 70% DVD and 30% VHS. The old formats aren't dead yet and won't be for a long time.

I have had an HDTV since Dec of last year, An HDTV computer video card that can record and play back from the hard drive utilizing the MPEG 2 19.4 or 24 meg data stream, an editing system that can edit HDV,
(V5), A Cineform codec that can capture MPEG2 data streams and convert them to avi, a JVC D-VHS VCR that the Cineform codec can
PTT to the D-VHS deck, an editing system that can render to just about any HD or HDV Mpg or Mpeg2 data steam, and the only thing I need is a camera and HD-DVD Player/burner. What I'm saying is why not have both the HDV and DV cameras or maybe just set the Sony HDV to 720 x 480 and presto---DV for the masses. Best BUY just announced that people are buying HDTV's with abandon and thats the reason they increased earnings this quarter.

I'm stoked on the HDV and the biggest reason why is all of the broadcast people are transmitting their HD programming utilizing the Mpeg2 19-4/7 data stream and the quality difference between them and what I can produce from slides and wmv's and the Sony test footage is minimal. There are some programs that have "anomalies"
but most of the shows are excellent. Don't get me wrong though, I like to put the XL1-s into auto and swing it around like a real dork, and the stuff comes out pretty good.

JJK

I came across this rather interesting article/interview that Charlie White did with Frank Governale at CBS News. It seems CBS is working with Sony on the development of the Sony XDCAM, which is fundamentally, as I understand it, DV on Blu-ray disk. ...http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/viewarticle.cgi?id=28063

Governale explains that CBS opted out of HD for ENG for the time being because the data stream rate is too high for satellite and because the transfer media is too expensive. Now, HDV ain't exactly HD, but, I think Governale has an interesting point.

Anyway, to each his own. I'm certainly not the last word on HDV, t's just simply the reasons why I opted out of HDV on this go-round. I'm sure I'll go HD or some variant of it in the future....just not now. OK, so I'm not a poster-boy for the HDV consortiums experimental format. And that's just what it is...experimental. And no manufacturer is gonna line up to design and build HDV supporting infrastructure until there's a market for it. Who's creating a market here? Looks pretty clear to my jaundiced eye.

Perhaps I should interject an apology, here. This is a Sony forum, provided by their good graces. I don't want to step into a crowd of Sony afficionados and raise their ire. So guys, I'm sorry for stating my opinion. I'll drop any more of it re: the FX1.

If the bitrate is high enough and the encoding process in the HDV camera is sophisticated enough, I wouldn't expect any artifacts. First thing one would probably do in the editing process is convert the HDV bitstream to a format that doesn't use interframe compression, so that frame-by-frame work would be as efficient as DV. Then at the end, your edited project could go back to the HDV file and cut the final video.

Even if HDV is not easily transported today, if I were shooting a wedding video I would tell the bride that she will not only be getting a DVD (in 480x720 format) that is especially crisp, but that some day when HDTV is universal she will have the master files to redo her wedding in HDTV! Wow! And I can provide all this to you for just $1,000 more! The camera would be paid off in no time...

For what it's worth, here is the first "review" of the HDR-FX1 I have seen. Not a full-blown review, but some interesting information nevertheless.

HDR-FX1 First Impression

John

Good point riredale. You can sell HD service now and keep it on layaway until a delivery format emerges.

If you throw out half your image with a lousy de-interlace algorythm, you're still going to have way more "progressive" resolution than with the Canon or the Panasonic! I can't imagine buying a regular mini-dv camera when a camera like this is available for close to the same price.

your laptop won't do 1080 because your monitor only does 900

silly comment about the hard drive, hdv will allow for better quality post work to provide better quality output. even if your still outputting to dvd, being able to crop without losing SD res will prove to be more handy than most realise. Even if you only use the new sony hdv cams for 16:9, its well worth it. obviously if there is no reason to upgrade, don't do it, but if your gonna buy a camera around the time sony releases hdv, why buy a SD cam for almost the same price as a HDV?

The biggest draw back with hdv is the audio being compressed!

>your laptop won't do 1080 because your monitor only does 900

Downscaling is handled in the video hardware. I believe the bottleneck is in decoding the video (CPU). The laptop is 3.2Ghz, but it doesn't FEEL like it that's for sure! I only have one PC that actually has the power to decode the 1080 resolution WMV. The rest show 100% CPU util and can only play short bursts at full framerate.

Thanks for the link John - the most detailed review I've seen.

I'm waiting for the pro version in the new year - hard not to salivate meanwhile!