How many times have you heard that? I’m not sure where all the FUD has come from regarding HDV but it’s starting to get on my nerves. Is HDV the perfect format? Definitely not! Does it get 1080i into a 25mbps datastream with surprisingly good results? Sure does!

I wasn’t really around when the transition to DV happened – were the same conversations happening? Did people say “We don’t want DV because it’s not really Standard Def”?

For people who aren’t clear: HDV can support up to 1080i, 60 fields per second, 8 bits per pixel, 4:2:0 sampling. Is it as good as HDCamSR? Nope. But DV isn’t as good as DigiBeta either. That doesn’t make it any less valid a format.

If anything, I think HDV makes it even more clear that the import issue is not what technology you use, but rather how you use it. Home movies shot with HDV will still look like home movies.

</rant>