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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gerald Thomas who wrote (38248)	1/16/1999 10:05:00 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

From tveurope........ Disk deadlines the the role of tape in TV by David Fox It could be another decade before disk-based camcorders are in widespread use delivering the quality broadcasters now expect from tape, according to Chris Daubney, managing director, Panasonic Broadcast Europe. "Disk camcorders will of course take over," but he believes this transition could take many years as disk camcorders will have to offer at least the same quality as tape, similar capacity or longer, similar reliability and power consumption, and low-priced hardware and media. Basic DVD camcorders offering MPEG at 4 Mbps quality should arrive in about two years, and he said these might just be good enough for news, but to retain existing quality standards will require much higher bit rates. "The EBU has shown that 50 Mbps is what is needed for high quality production, so disk-based cameras will have to meet that standard," he said. Daubney believes it will be 2005 "before we will see a DVCPRO-25 equivalent disk-based camcorder." Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company) is doing a lot of work on this and has found it will first require the development of blue laser technology to write to disks at sufficiently high density at the required power consumption and reliability. The laser will have to be mounted just one-tenth of a micron from the disk, "and keeping that mounted safely is not a trivial job," he explained. To produce a 25 MHz format it will have to write at 33 Mbps (to include audio and metadata), and 66 Mbps for 50 MHz, which he predicts will be introduced in 2007. "But, we still have to remember that the storage capacity limitations at 25 or 50 MHz will still be an issue, even for server systems, although disk capacity is growing." Even when these disks do arrive, he maintains that it will have not mean current DVCPRO users will need to invest in a new format, as DVCPRO is "a system standard and not just a tape format" he said. He believed that archiving onto tape will remain for 30 to 40 years, although he admitted tape is already migrating out to the edges (archive and acquisition) of the production chain. DVCPRO-50 hits 1500 Panasonic has sold more than 1,500 units of DVCPRO-50 since it was released at IBC in September. Buyers include broadcasters in Germany, Scandinavia and Ireland, where RTE has just taken 15 widescreen camcorders for current affairs and news as part of a 160 piece package (as DVCPRO is also being used by Ulster TV and TnaG, Daubney claimed it is now the dominant format in Ireland). CNN+ Spain, has bought Quickcutters and the DVedit package, while Reuters has recently ordered even more DVCPRO equipment. Panasonic will show the first DVCPRO-100 hardware at NAB, which is aimed at HDTV news acquisition in the US, and is already researching future versions offering even higher quality. It has also been researching the transport of DVCPRO, both 4:1:1 and 4:2:2, over 4:2:0 MPEG-2 links. Panasonic product manager Jim Hart said that according to tests conducted with Avid "it is the smallest pipe which determines the quality of the link," and 4:2:0 is just about fit for contribution -- "but I'd be very worried about using it for other [applications]." However, Avid's tests found that it didn't matter which originating format was used. "The distortion for D5 was almost the same as for DVCPRO," he said. Chris Daubney added that "the only difference between 4:1:1 and 4:2:2 is the sharpness of the colour edges, which is only really needed for captions and the few things with sharp colour edges. Most real scenes don't need it, so why waste data shooting at a higher data rate when there is nothing in the scenes that demand it? Let's optimise our storage by taking advantage of the technology. Use your eyes," he suggested. Panasonic has also introduced two new plasma screens, which Charlie Fenton, its corporate sales development executive, claims offer the highest brightness level using a "unique dual scanning method," the highest contrast ratio (550:1) available and, at 89 mm, "the smallest depth of any plasma screen." The first, a 42-inch SVGA version, will be available next month, while the 50-inch XGA model will be released later in the year.