Comments

farss wrote on 3/29/2006, 4:09 AM
Well yes he does and he doesn't.
If you follow the argument to the conclusion that I think you're trying to draw then one could ask why even bother with DV when most TVs aren't capable of much better than what comes off VHS. But hang there's quite a few TV stations in the USA doing just that.
Does that tell you something about the general state of this industry in the USA.
Does the fact that Beta SP is still the defacto broadcast standard in the USA tell you even more?

But there's more pearls of wisdom in what Simon has to say. High quality 16:9 SD looks very, very good. In fact I agree, that's what I watch, straight DVB from the stations, RGB to the TV, really see very little if any quality loss between what I see at home and what I see of the master tapes from a broadcaster.

And here's the amazing thing, I've yet to see a DVD of matching quality, be it my own or a Hollywood title. So as far as I'm concerned SD PAL DVD is an inferior content delivery medium, I pay money to watch worse quality images than I get for free off air, no wonder I don't buy many DVDs. Of course whenever I'm forced to watch a NTSC DVD the quality goes down even further.

So what's this mean for acquisition?

Well the only cameras most people can afford that'll delivery a vaguely acceptable 16:9 SD image just happen to be HDV cameras. Sure for SD a DV camera like a 570 is pretty good, a 790 even better but we're talking over 10 times the price of a Z1, go figure which one has the convenience factor (you can afford it!).
Sure it'd be nice to to shoot and edit 16:9 DigiBeta, figure $50K for a camera and the same amount again for a deck, actually that gear is getting pretty cheap now, lots of the smarter stringer ditching their SD gear before the bum falls right out of the market.

I'll make one prediction. The current HD standards will soon be deemed inadequate. We have a whole generation who are used to not only HD images but staggering frame rates. For them neither projected 35mm film or HD TV in it's current state will be anything like adequate.
Too much is made of "at the typical viewing distance". Ever watch someone play a video game, what is their field of view, I've seen plenty of teenagers playing where the viewing angle is beyond 120 deg. Think about it, 3 19" screens, that's around 3500x1000 pixels of resolution and anything upto 100fpsn Nobody's even dreamed of a video system that comes close to that, yet every year the games market steals more of Hollywoods business and the cinemas get emptier.
So to my way of thinking HD is already passe, those that are going to make the big bucks out of it have taken their money and left the building and are already working on what comes next, the very best anyone can hope for with the current crop of HD is the crumbs they left behind.

Bob.