We discuss a CNET article on HD camcorders and we talk about the SONY Corporation.
We receive a lot of email asking about HD camcorders. Since we haven't
bought one ourselves its hard for us to talk about the topic. So today
we are going to talk about
CNETs Quick Guide to Camcorders.
Recently there have been a lot of new cameras hitting the market with
different recording formats ranging in price from under $700 US to more
than $16,000. So what do you need to think about.
Other things to consider is what format is the video recorded in. Some
camcorders are using mpeg 4. That's great for a finished product but
what about if you want to do editing. Its like trying to edit a highly
compressed picture in Photoshop. If you don't start with high quality
you can't be expected to output something with high quality. So you
want to look at the data rate. The higher the better. The $700 Sanyo
records at 9 Mbps. Don't expect to do much editing with that. Even at
the higher data rates mpeg 4 may not work well anyway. Some camcorders
have proprietary formats that may not be readily editable by your
software. Finally, high quality HD video will be very cumbersome to
deal with as the data will be huge and it will require a high power
computer to edit.
The article finished up with three final things to consider:
1)
Aspect Ratio - make sur eyour camera can record widescreen. To see if
your camera can really support wide screen divide the camera resolution
by 1920 and make sure the number is at least 540 for 1080i and 1080 for
1080p. Example a camera with a resolution of 1.08 mgapixels can support
a 1080i resolution 1,080,000/1920 is 562.5 so it has enough resolution
to support a 1080i widescreen image. If it can capture a progressive
image this camera could support 720p 1,080,000/1280 = 843.
2)
HDMI - how do you get the image on your TV? HDMI will provide the best
picture. Using component may degrade the picture. Note- you can use
1394 but most TVs do not support this format. It is required for video
capture on your PC.
3) Recording Media - If your camcorder uses HDV tapes you can save some money by using high quality MiniDV tapes instead.
SONY was founded on May 7th 1946 by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita.
They named the company Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo
Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company basically had
no money, machinery or scientific equipment. They pretty much only had
what was in their heads. The company managed to build Japan's first
tape recorder called the Type-G.
Ibuka traveled in the United States in the early fifties to
visit Bell labs. He wanted to visit the company that invented the
transistor and put it to use in a commercial application, the
Transistor Radio. invention of the transistor. American companies
Regency and TI are creditied with building the first transistor radios.
But TTK was the first commercially successful transistor radios called
the TR 55.
It wasn't until 1958 that TTK adopted SONY as its name.
During post it was highly unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman
letters. In fact Totsuko's principle bank, Mitsui, took immediate
exception to the idea. They asked why would you change the name when
eveyone alrady knows you as TTK? Ibuka and Morita had much bigger plans
for SONY that went beyond their borders.
From
Wikipedia:
The
name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of the Latin word sonus,
which is the root of sonic and sound, the English word "sunny", and
from the word Sonny-boys which is Japanese slang for "whiz kids".
However "Sonny" was thought to sound too much like the Japanese saying
soh-nee which means business goes bad. Morita pushed for a word that
does not exist in any language so that they could claim the word "Sony"
as their own (which paid off when they sued a candy producer who also
used the name who claimed that "Sony" was just an existing word in some
language).
1950s
Reel-to-reel tape recorders (1950)
Transistor radios (1955)
1960s
Portapak (1967)
Trinitron (1968)
1970s
U-matic (1971-1983)
Betamax* (1975-1988)
Elcaset (1976-1980)
STR Series of AV receivers (197?)
Walkman (1979)
1980s
Mavica (1981)
Betacam* (1982)
Compact Disc (1982)
Watchman (1982)
3.5" diskette (1983)
MSX computer (1983)
Discman (1984)
Handycam (1985)
Video8 (1985)
ICF-2010 Longwave/AM/Shortwave/FM/Air Band Receiver (1985-2003)
NEWS Computer workstations (1987-1996)
D2 (1988)
Hi8 (1989)
Video Walkman (1989)
1990s
MiniDisc* (1992)
PlayStation* (later PS one) (1994-2004)
Magic Link (1994-1997)
DV (1995)
MiniDV (1995)
Cyber-shot (1996)
Digital8* (1999)
FD Trinitron (1996)
VAIO (1997)
FeliCa (1997)
Digital Mavica (1997)
Ruvi (1998-1999)
Memory Stick* (1998)
HiFD (1998-2001)
Super Audio CD (1998)
Aibo (1999-2006)
2000s
PlayStation Portable (Charcoal Black)
Memory Stick PRO (2000-)
Memory StickPRO DUO
CLIE (2000-2005)
ImageStation (2000)
PlayStation 2* (2000)
LocationFree (Airbord) (2000)
MicroMV (2002)
SonicStage (2002)
HDV (2003)
Qualia (2003-2006)
Blu-ray Disc (2006)
PSX (2003)
Qrio (2003)
Connect (2004)
PlayStation 2 Slimline (2004)
PlayStation Portable* (Japan 2004, USA, EU 2005)
Universal Media Disc (UMD)* (2004) (2005
BRAVIA (2005)
Sony Digital SLR Cameras (2006)
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