Will Consumer HD Always Suck?
As the number of pixels goes up on every imaging device on the market, the video image quality has not kept up. It is true that video is getting better but I can’t shake the impatience I have with devices marketing “HD” that compress the hell out of the image to fit it in significantly less space than good ‘ol NTSC 25megabit DV. Pixel counts sell these days but I am hopeful. Certainly, the prosumer market (and even the consumer market) for digital still cameras indicates that image quality matters to people.
The problem of course is data storage. Solid state storage has finally scaled to a level where it is cost effective to replace tapes or (gag) writable miniDVDs in consumer cameras. Still, the size of these storage devices is still a bit shy of the roughly 12GB a miniDV tape could hold. As a result, the camera makers try to mae due with less, cranking up compression to make big marketing claims like “holds 1 hour of video” and the all-important “HD”.
Truth be told, the problem was present from the very start for consumer HD. The entire HDv format of cramming an HD image into a 25Mbit stream, was flawed. But it set a precedent, and it set the bar very low.
So, we can only go up from here. The DVCProHD100 is a good start. Similar strong codecs are appearing on the fringes of the consumer video camera market. Presumably that will be the trend going forward. This is what we can hope for: the camera manufacturers, unable to advertise more pixels (at least until 2K projectors hit the market) will start to focus on more quality. Then we’ll just have to figure out how to store all that video weighing in at as much as 1GB per minute. Still that’s a problem I want to have.