Since the time Sony's market leading Walkman cassette player was taken over with CD and later MP3 players, they have failed to lead the market no matter what they offered when it came to portable digital music. Well, at least Sony should be happy that they currently lead the US camcorder market with 50% market share.
Since the introduction of the DVD camcorder where consumers can play these discs in a standard DVD player without conversion, soaring sales of DVD camcorders has made it the fastest growing camcorder format ever, bringing the DVD camcorder market to a 22% market share or double that of this time last year. Sony also leads the DVD camcorder market with a 85% market share.
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According to the latest market research from NPD Intellect, the DVD format now accounts for 22 percent of the camcorder market, double a year ago. And Sony DVD Handycam® camcorders represent a whopping 85 percent of this unit total here in the U.S. Sony also leads the total U.S. camcorder industry with nearly 50 percent market share for all camcorder sales. "People have responded to how easy it is to record and share memories on DVD," said Linda Vuolo, director for camcorders at Sony Electronics. "By offering well-designed and feature-rich Handycam models, we've taken the lead in the sales of DVD camcorders and have helped to create a whole new market." "IDC believes that over the next five years, more than two-billion gigabytes of family stories and funny moments will be recorded, shared and stored on DVD, all thanks to innovative and easy to use products like Sony DVD Handycam camcorders," said Chris Chute, IDC's camcorder analyst. Starting at about $600, the DVD Handycam camcorder line includes five models, delivering such features as Dolby® Digital 5.1 channel surround recording, DVD+RW/-RW/-R compatibility, and touch-panel displays. |
While DVD camcorders may make it just as straight forward to make live motion video recordings as it is to archive them, these camcorders do have several drawbacks over DV tape: DV captures a much higher quality than with DVD for the same play mode, particularly when filming a fast motion source. At present, DVD camcorders cost a lot more than DV camcorders for similar features. For this price, one could easily purchase a higher spec DV camcorder and a standalone DVD recorder together for the similar price, not to mention gaining the advantage of being able to use higher capacity cheaper 12cm recordable DVDs at a small cost of time transferring the recordings.
Source: Sony - News & Information
[edited by DamnedIfIknow on 17.11.2005 06:26]
Being an extremely happy owner of a Sony DVD403 camcorder and having a chance to see miniDV recordings I can tell you: MiniDV for non-professional use SUCKS!
1. You can't watch it on a dvd player, being the most widespread way of watching video. You can't distribute it to your broader family or friends like that. You have to convert it. Any conversion (that you will be watching, not the original dv) will be worse than my mpeg2 recorded footage. You will be compressing twice, me only once. At HQ setting I do 9.1mbps for video and let me tell you... IT LOOKS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. Even on older tv-s, let alone on wide screens etc.
2. I do 16:9 video right from the start.
3. Dolby 5.1 AC3 audio right there.
4. Editing.... he he. All I have to do is put together selected clips (cut & paste, no transcoding and re-encoding) and bind it through a dvd menu. Creating menus and navigation pieces alone takes a lot of time (selecting art mostly - music, images, animations,...), let alone having to re-encode it. With good selection of templates it could be a breeze, creating a dvd.
5. Blank disks are NOT expensive. Double sided Optodisc is $3.75, Canadian (of course Sony charges 7 times more, but that's Sony for you, Optodisc works flawlessly).
6. Tapes... seeking, rewinding.. back forward. Oh, I had it with tapes. Long time ago.
6. 3MP digital camera with flash included.
And finally, if you are so concerned with having family video be of the utmost quality, why don't you get real professional equipment and do full DV. You know, miniDV still "screws up" video by compressing it.... 7:1.
I am absolutely sure that on tv you will be hard pressed to tell the difference between my original hq mpeg2 and your miniDV, especially your re-encoded miniDV into mpeg2. It is so obvious. And finally speaking about people who would be watching it and enjoying it... there would be no difference. It's only that I had my work finished in less time and with less effort. There!
About hard drives.... not so good with vibrations... as usual. Only the solid state memory, when it becomes cheap enough could make me switch... but only if it does mpeg2 .. or whatever the current most widespread format for watching video is at the time.
Finally, with 9.1mbps I could even re-encode it and it would still look good.
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