HDTV Camcorder–And the March to Marketplace Reality

A complex twelve year development of High Definition Television production standards has vied with consecutive generations of HD program origination equipment. While these attempted to aspire to the full promise of the ever-evolving standards, they were also grappling with a multiplicity of marketplace realities as separately defined by the world's broadcasters and program producers. HDTV program origination continues to be frustrated by unrealistic equipment costs, and a lack of mobile battery-powered HD acquisition systems. The latter is central to the proper exploitation of the significant enhancement to television imagery latent within the technical parameters defined by the latest SMPTE-274 M HDTV production standard. — This paper describes a bold development thrust that sought to simultaneously lower costs and produce a high-performance, highly-compact, HD acquisition system. The technological leap from contemporary HDTV cameras and digital recorders to an all-digital one piece HD camcorder called for the best in engineering innovation, pragmatic design decisions, and a massive commitment to custom-built VLSI. The paper specifically describes the prototype of the 1920 times 1035 (SMPTE 260 M) based camcorder that will make its product debut in late 1997 in Japan. A modified product, based on the later SMPTE 274 M standard (1920 times 1080 format), will follow.

Published

1997-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00215

ISBN

978-1-61482-926-3