Are you Ready to Make the Switch to HDV? (page 2)

Viewing HDV

Even if your final viewing destination isn't an HD compatible device, down-converted HDV will, in most cases, look superior to video shot on consumer grade DV cameras. An HDV camera captures more than four times the amount of data that a standard DV camera does. Unless you're competing with a high-end pro DV cam, your down-sampled HDV will be clearer.

Many flat screen and plasma screen TVs will also play back HDV. To get the best effect, you need a resolution of at least 1280x1080.

Until/unless you make a decision on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray (when they finally ship), you may be hard pressed to find a playback mechanism that doesn't involve either your computer or your camera itself.

Apple will let you burn HDV (and HD) to a common DVD via DVD Studio Pro 4.0 for playback on a computer through QuickTime.

Microsoft has a series of codecs which play back 720p or 1080i on your computer as well. WMV-HD (Windows Media Video-High-Definition) discs such as with the documentaries The Living Sea and The Magic of Flight are already available in some stores and from www.wmvhd.com. There is some commercial content available for WMV-HD, including the James Cameron classic Terminator 2 (the WMV-HD version can be found on Terminator 2, Extreme Edition). Authoring guidelines for WMV-HD are available on Microsoft's Web site.

Your computer display is most likely HDV capable, though your computer itself might not be. Microsoft recommends a 3.0GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and a 128MB video card. While sitting in front of the computer screen watching movies isn't really my idea of fun, I'm becoming more acclimated to viewing my laptop as a portable theater; comfortable viewing is often limited to one or, at most, two people. There are applications such as BlazeDVD from BlazeVideo, which are geared towards making your computer as much like a home theater as possible. BlazeDVD supports not only WMV-HD, but also just about every other popular video format and many audio formats including Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. All you need is that chair from the Maxe…