7 Levels of HD





Over the course of the next two years, we will see the existing 100 Mbps through 440 Mbps range of current HD recording blossom into seven different tiers of HD options:

BitrateAvailabilityDescriptionMarket positioning
25 MbpsNAB 2004DVHS, HDV, Blu-Ray, Panasonic memory cardReplacements for current SD cameras
50 MbpsNAB 2005HDV2, Pro-HDV.  Look for a prototype at NAB2004 from JVC, and models coming from Panasonic, Hitachi (blue laser even), Ikegami, and Sharp later in the year. Sony will also offer a ProHDV unit, and theirs will have additional bandwidth at 72Mbps instead of just 50Mbps.
100 MbpsCurrentDVCPROHDStill valid for HDTV and indie filmmaking
170 MbpsCurrentHDCAM 3:1:1
440 MbpsAvailableHDCAM SR 4:2:2 New digital cinema offerings
880 MbpsAvailable on the SR recorder, with cameras forthcoming.HDCAM SR 2X - allows HD at 4:4:4 sampling.
UncompressedAvailable in a myriad of configurationsVarious hard disk-based solutions exist such as the amazing Thompson Viper Filmstream.

A little detail about the bandwidth options in HDV can be gleaned from Charlie White's great article on Pinnacle's upcoming HD strategy.  Starting at the bottom of page 1 and going through all of page 2 in that article there's great hints info the future of HDV.  Not too much longer and SD will be dead entirely.
Is MPEG-4 "in the cards"?
Perhaps we should include an eigth tier at the top of this list consuming an even lower bitrate than HDV.  It is possible that when DSPs become advanced enough, Panasonic and perhaps other manufacturers will introduce memory card based consumer camcorders employing MPEG-4 compression.  I personally anticipate they will record 1280x720 HD at various rates up to around 9 Mbps.  The real barrier to this kind of convenient solution is the significantly more complex calculations required to do MPEG4.  As if MPEG2 wasn't hard enough to compress, MPEG4 requires around three times more processing horsepower.  This equates to more complex encoding and shorter battery life in a small camcorder form factor.  Panasonic currently offers their line of small D-Snap mini-camcorders that each record with MPEG4 at a very low resolution -- 320x240 (CIF) -- on SD cards.

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