JVC Everio HDV very soon?

[Cobb]

http://www.techdigest.tv/2005/07/jvc_plans_high_.html

Discuss!

[infocus]

The principle makes a lot of sense given their existing range of hard drive SD cameras. I'm left with less confidence about the author by statements such as "hard disks were the obvious platform for HDV" - the very term HDV can ONLY legitimately be applied to the entire system, tape and all. The HDV datastream recorded onto another medium cannot be legally referred to as HDV.

[Cobb]

Where would HDD consumer-level 'HD' (no longer to be called HDV – how does HDD-HD sound?), presumably at a consumer-pricing point, leave the latest HDV (tape) developments from Sony et al.? Dead in the water?

[Alan Roberts]

There's plenty of market room available for all the technologies for a few years yet. I keep on saying that tape will disappear from the image capture process, simply because it makes the editing so much easier, there's no ingest time. The only issue is which technology will dominate the market, hard drives, optical, or solid state. I think there's no doubt that solid state will eventually be the winner, but optical and hard-drive have a few years of life while they're cheaper.

[infocus]

Not really. The disadvantage of "HDD-HD" ;) is that you have to be quite on the ball with downloading, maybe editing, then transferring to a more archivable format. I suspect many consumer movies ( new baby, holiday etc)remain as rushes, so the consumable nature of tape is far more satisfactory. A more likely threat to HDV is the emergence of Blu-Ray camcorders - just as DVD is to DV.

[Cobb]

True, but I'll believe next gen disc technology when I see it. So much trouble and hot air...

And you're right about archiving, but with the concurrent growth of HDD recorders, replacing VHS and DVD, it's not hard to imagine a 'wired' home ents setup where one simply plugs a camcorder into a standalone recorder.

[Unicorn]

I suspect many consumer movies ( new baby, holiday etc)remain as rushes, so the consumable nature of tape is far more satisfactory.

Exactly. As far as I can see, tape or (HD-type) DVD will be the future for the consumer market for quite a while yet... few people who buy 300 pound cameras are going to want to copy footage off a hard disk and faff around with it when they can just record direct to a cheap and simple system where the recording medium is the master.

[cstv]

a lot of people have digital stills cameras and i doubt many of them buy a new memory card every time they go on holiday.

most people either dump them to their hard drive, or get them printed. The video equivilent of which is to get it transfered (either yourself or by a 3rd party) to HD-DVD.

[Unicorn]

a lot of people have digital stills cameras and i doubt many of them buy a new memory card every time they go on holiday.

Yes, because there's so much similarity between shooting a couple of hundred photos on a memory card, deleting the hundred that are crap and copying the rest to your hard drive, and recording six hours of video and editing it down to half an hour.

Digital cameras took over from film because they're more convenient and cheaper. Solid-state camcorders are much _less_ convenient and more expensive than tape or DVD camcorders.

[Alan Roberts]

They are now, but that won't always be the case. All you have to do is to look at the growth of digital stills camera sales. That hasn't happened because they're cheap, they aren't, or at least they are only just starting to be so. It's because they're simple to use. Tape is fiddly to use, people tend not to edit footage because it's such a fiddly thing to do, but if the camera has a recording medium that eases editing, people will do it much more readily.

Times are a'changing, tape'll go eventually. The issue is only when, and what takes over. I still say that there's plenty of room for all the technologies, and that tyhe market will decide which, if it's only one, wins.

[Chrome]

Tape is fiddly to use, people tend not to edit footage because it's such a fiddly thing to do

Well there was the woman who came up to me at a wedding complaining her 5 year old 'digital' camcorder wasn't working properly, she could play back what she had recorded but it would not record any more.

I explained that I did not do repairs but would take a look... battery power was fine, but the tape she had been recording on was at the end. I ejected it and asked her if she had another tape so I could try it. She looked at me with a rather blank expression and then said... Oh you take that out? Though she had regularly charged the battery, she had only just come to the end of her first tape IN FIVE YEARS!
:D

[Stuart B-M]

Has been interesting reviewing comments over this great first link/news,

More here
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-Introduces-Four-Hard-Drive-Based-Everio-Camcorders.htm

Only a 'tease' perhaps, but news from the review link includes the possibility of.... a major step forward for the Everio line, that they will be partnering with a third party manufacturer to produce a stand-alone DVD burner unit compatible with the Everio camcorder for copying the video footage. This would largely address the problem of where to archive video shot on the Everio. JVC executives said that they expected such a product to come out in the fall and retail around $330.

[infocus]

THE big negative of current hard drive solutions - from such as the Firestore right up to the professional Ikegami camera - is the length of time taken from power on to being able to record. Users of Firestore are well aware that this is typically 15seconds plus, and the ikegami is similar. Hence it has not been taken widely up for news use...... ;) That's one thing (as with Firestore) when it is an as well as to tape, quite another when it's the sole storage media. Anybody know what that time is like for current Everios?

The quote I find disturbing from the previous link is this: "JVC has perhaps left itself open to questions of ethicality with the inclusion of the letters "HDD" on its lens barrel. While camcorder insiders might already know that HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive, it seems likely that some consumers will be confused into thinking that the new Everios include HD, "High Definition" technology. The acronym HD has become common enough to enter the consumer's lexicon. " And from the photo in the link, the font used is uncannily similar to that used for such as the "HDReady" logo.

JVC got a bit of a bad name after some purchasers found their "Hi-Resolution" PD1s were not Hi-Def, as they'd believed, and at least one purchaser I know swears he'll never buy JVC again. If this is a genuine mistake, I hope JVC will redesign their logo to avoid misleading less knowedgeable consumers.

[bcrabtree]

http://www.techdigest.tv/2005/07/jvc_plans_high_.html

Discuss!

I think I'd quibble with the use of the term "very soon" in the subject line of this thread.

The article says, "the first HDV Everio should reach the UK by the end of next year."

Can't see that as being "very soon" by anyone's book.

Bob C

[Cobb]

Just a bit of tabloid journalism to spark interest! Surely straught out of the WV school Mr C...?

[bcrabtree]

Just a bit of tabloid journalism to spark interest! Surely straught out of the WV school Mr C...?

I defy you to find any headline in any issue of a magazine that I edited that had something as fundamentally inaccurate as that one (typos excluded, of course).

;)

Bob C

[Unicorn]

Tape is fiddly to use, people tend not to edit footage because it's such a fiddly thing to do

You may be right, but I disagree: I think people tend not to edit footage because it takes a lot of effort. Going through 300 photos from a digital still camera and printing out the good ones is easy.. going through three hours of footage from a camcorder and turning it into fifteen minutes that your relatives might want to watch is hard work. It's a very, very fundamental difference in the medium, and the method used to record the video footage is irrelevant.

Heck, even I still haven't finished editing holiday videos from 1990...