Posted by Smarty on 11/22/07 17:43

Denny,

Your assessment is essentially correct, and may recommend deferring any
purchases a bit longer. You may want to consider the following, however:

Current HD camcorders available for well below $1000 deliver vastly superior
video quality to those who view them with HDTV monitors / receivers. The
delivery method can be as simple as a normal DVD-R burned with a typical
($30) DVD-R burner, providing approx. 46 minutes of content when used with
HDV (mpeg2) encoding, or essentially twice as much if encoded with
mpeg4/AVCHD compression, a somewhat less mature format with a bit more
artifacts. In both cases, the recipient needs an HD playback device, either
an HD DVD player (now available for under $200 with 10 HD DVD movie disks
included) or a BluRay player (about $400 with 5 BluRay movies included). The
players are, as you are already aware, engaged in a format war, and neither
player will play the other format (although dual format players including an
imminent Samsung dual format player) will mitigate this problem (at a cost
of nearly $1000!).

Editing HD and authoring these disks requires relatively modest computer and
software tools, and I particularly favor a terrific $89 program which does
the entire job despite owning much more expensive programs like Final Cut
Pro HD and Vegas Studio 8, both of which are vastly more complex for the
serious professional user.

You could consider replacing the camcorder first with HDV, making standard
def downsampled disks for the time being, and then migrating to HD format as
your recipients begin to commit to the newer players.

The format war was introduced a big element of uncertainty for many if not
most buyers, so the transition may not take place for years. There are,
however, enough price cuts to make the current opponents attractive
immediately if you are willing to face 'orphaned' formats and products a few
years from now.

An alternative approach for computer-savvy recipients is to deliver the
encoded file to them on a data disk and let them play the content with
freeware on a PC or Mac. The recipient may need to download some additional
player software and/or codecs to allow for HD playback, but this is a low
cost and low risk distribution method until the format war is resolved.

Hope this helps,


Smarty


"Denny" <nudest@ca.inter.net> wrote in message
news:a358c62a-1c9e-4dff-94a0-866c98b5f7b8@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Hello, for the past 5 years I have been producing a home video and
> sending copies to family and friends around Christmas time. It's about
> 60 minutes and consists of skits, stories and various light-hearted
> shenanigans. I switched from VHS to DVD-R 3 years ago, and most
> everyone on my mailing list now has a DVD player.
>
> My camera is a standard def Panasonic PV DV953 that I'm quite happy
> with. I use a PC for editing and once I've burned the finished video
> onto a DVD, I use a Pioneer DVD recorder to make copies to send out.
>
> My questions relate to moving up to high def. HD video cams are now
> available as is the editing software to support HD. However, how would
> I get in onto an HD medium and deliver it?
>
> I understand that there are 2 proprietary HD DVD formats - Blu Ray and
> HD DVD (the VHS and Beta showdown all over again). Looks like you have
> to pick one of the above and go with it?
>
> Are there recordable Blu Ray/HD DVD discs available? What about the
> machines to record onto one or the other?
>
> Then, just as some of my recipients still clung on to their VCRs, they
> would have to own an HD TV as well as a player that reads Blu Ray or
> HD DVD.
>
> Have I sized up the situation properly? I'm thinking I'll stick to std
> def for quite a while yet before making any committment.
>
> Thank you in advance for your help,
> Denny

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