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Anyway here is a brief summary of the more interesting products at NAB this year, there were many more bits of kit from smaller companies, we will tell you more later.

Sony:

Digital Betacam:

Due to new regulations the old and trusted DVW A500P and DVW 500P have been consigned to silicon heaven. The new DVW M2000P and DVW 2000P are the new streamlined versions, slightly smaller, less power, longer head life (allegedly), the M2000P replays all current ½" PAL formats excluding High Definition and has PAL Composite input as standard. Available June 2004. The future of the camcorder is unknown as yet.

High Definition:

HD Cam S series, the Digi Beta killer. The revised HDW 730S is a slightly defeatured HDW 730 recording HDCAM 1080I 50 and 60, so this is basically a video only HD camcorder with a list price of £28K, so will be substantially below the street price of a DVW 790WSP. VTRs to go with it, the HDW S2000 is not particularly suited to the European market as it replays HD Cam 50 and 60 but only SX and SP in SD. Sony may be looking at a version that replays Digital Betacam to ease integration. List Price around £28K so again will be sub DVW M2000P. There is also a HDW 280S in the line up, a portable recorder with built in LCD screen, this is still in prototype stage but is expected to be in the low £10K + region.
The HDC X300 POV camera provides a ½" HD camera head supporting all the 1080 formats from 24P through to 60. Hard to see the application at this point when you need to use a full-blown HD recorder to get the benefits. Possible use in multi camera set-ups to a single recorder.
Sony re launched the SRW Uncompressed High Definition format again, very expensive, if interested give me a call.

XD Cam:

Sony are reporting 1500 units sold in Europe. The full software version 1.1 will be available August 2004; this will give full functionality to the system allowing rough-cut from the camera and field recorder. Sony have announced their intent to produce a straight XD Cam drive for use with NLE systems, and future availability of smaller 8cm discs for use in smaller equipment, PD 170P type camcorders maybe.

HDV:

Sony showed some conceptual HDV equipment to show they are committed to the new format, but do not have a finished product as yet. For those not in the know, there are two flavours of HDV, HDV1 and HDV2. HDV1 is 720P supporting 25,30,50 & 60 frame rates, HDV2 is 1080I supporting 50 and 60. The system uses DV tapes and the tape runs at the same speed and pitch as DV using MPEG 2 compression. Sony have opted for HDV2, for comparison HD Cam is 4:2:2 and 1920 x 1080, where HDV2 is 4:2:0 and 1440 x 1080, (HDV1 is 1280 lines horizontal resolution). As advised the equipment was at the concept stage, but I would expect to see prototype later this year.

Batteries:

Sony have launched two new batteries utilising a graphite cathode. Basically this allows you to get more power from lithium ion cells enabling more power from the same size battery. This gives a 95W battery the same size as the current BPL60a or BP iL75. Cell manufacturers have been investigating carbon cathodes for some time I believe, it is my understanding the overall life of the battery was reduced by working the cells this hard. It may be a numbers game to get something pertaining to be a BPL90a replacement, but bear in mind the BPL90a gave 117W.

IDX launched their battery management system I-Trax, this allows the thorough interrogation of IDX batteries enabling the owner / user to see what their batteries are doing. The system is easy to use and should list around £250.00, a definite must for hire companies and large users.

Panasonic P2:

Panasonic have come a long way since last year and have P2 cameras up and running. The P2 concept is to record media on to an array of five PCMCIA cards, each recording 16Mins of DVC Pro or 8Mins of DVC Pro50. I honestly believe solid state is the way to go but wonder if P2 is a bit ahead of it's time, with the cost of the media being prohibitive for some styles of acquisition. That is the set of five cards (Panasonic do tend to skirt the question) probably cost well over £1,000.00 a piece. So to make full use of the system you would need to shoot and dump before shooting again.
Each card records it's own signature the order they are put into a player doesn't matter, visions of dropping the five cards and trying to work out the order are not valid. The bit rate of each card easily allows the migration to HD with Panasonic showing Varicam and DVC Pro 100 concept versions. A domestic DV P2 camcorder was also shown at concept stage, due around 2006 with an estimated price of under £2K.

Lenses:

The use of portable cameras in studios is sharply on the rise. At NAB 2004, Canon introduced an entirely new kind of studio lens designed specifically and only for portable cameras, the DIGISUPER 22xs. The DIGISUPER 22xs offers a focal length of 7.3 - 161mm and being equipped with a 2X extender, it can achieve a focal length of 14.6~322mm. The HJ21 x 7.5 has been replaced with the HJ22 x 7.6 and the 33x has been replaced by the 35x. Canon have replaced their prime range the FJ range being replaced by the FJs set that runs from 5mm to 55mm, the focus rotation angle has been increased from 180 deg to 280 deg and overall optical and mechanical performance have been improved. A less expensive cine style zoom was released, the HJ8 x 5.5B KLL which should retail at around £13.5K.
Zeiss chose NAB to launch their new B4 mount 6 to 24mm zoom. This should retail around £30K but isn't available until the end of the year. This is indicative of the lack of take up in the Video HD market of quality primes, it is my assumption that Zeiss are thinking that users effectively take the zoom in lieu of four Digi Primes, and then take a wide prime then a long prime and maybe a long zoom, you never know.

There were many other new products, but these were the main points on the kit side. If you would like any further information please call us and we'll try and help.

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