Sony's first three XDCAM HD products, the PDW-F330 camcorder and the
PDW-F30 and F70 decks, will not ship in volume until the second quarter
of 2006. Quoting only European prices, Sony said the F330 will list for
€20,000 ($24,500), and the F30 and F70 decks for €15,000 ($18,500) and
€10,000 ($12,200), respectively.
The F330 is almost identical to the current XDCAMs except for the
positioning of the LCD screen and the very important option of using an
auto-focus lens. The high-end F70 deck, designed for integration in an
HDCAM environment, offers HD-SDI and features including slow-motion
playback.
The camera records 1080i 4:2:0 to disc. XDCAM HD runs at three
different quality levels – 18 Mbps (120 minutes), 25 Mbps (90 minutes)
and 35 Mbps (60 minutes) – and allows users to mix footage shot at all
three bit rates on the same XDCAM disc. Sony plans to use the IP
address in the camcorder (as with the XDCAM 1.4 software) for live
proxy streaming but, Sony's Senior Marketing Manager Olivier Bovis
warns, because it's based on wi-fi, it can introduce instability in a
production environment. "Put simply, it is not up to broadcast work,"
he says.