All this time, I thought I was working with HD. You know, the beautiful HD images produced by our $9,000 Canon XL-H1s, or a $25,000 Sony F350.

I was wrong.

You see, I was reading Wired tonight, and stumbled upon a Canon ad which explains that their new HV10 shoots in “True HD,” because it has a 1920×1080 imager. Everyone else is just a poser.

Time to throw out the XL-H1s I suppose. Or maybe not.

You see, the HV10 is an HDV camera. Which means that the signal it puts to tape is 1440×1080. Just like all 1080i HDV cameras. Some 1080i cameras (Sony HVR-V1U) have chips that are actually lower in resolution than 1440×1080. Some, like the XL-H1 and the XDCam have chips that are exactly 1440×1080. It seems nobody else has deemed it necessary to build a camera that images at a higher resolution than it records. Wonder why?