JVC Professional APRIL 2007 NAB-2007 The ProHD Report
Copyright 2007 JVC Professional Products Company All rights reserved Page 5 of 43
With the new economic realities in local news, where perhaps total audience has
been declining and ad dollars are being shared with other forms of commercial
delivery to the home, your station must explore all seemingly viable HD news
technology options, where the immediate and long term goals are optimum ROI and
profitability. And don’t forget flexibility: If your station spends $5 million on HD
news transition in 2007, you probably have to live with that decision for many years
before additional capital becomes available. However, as an example, if you spend
“just” $2 million, you may “buy” flexibility to adjust and re-direct as you experience
the new realities of the local news economics as your local market dynamics change
over the next several years.
The promise of JVC’s ProHD is to allow any TV station to transition to HD ENG
particularly (but also in other areas of HD news) quickly and highly cost effectively,
while providing the professional performance and features expected by TV
broadcasters. Here is a small example of the differences just in the HD camcorder
pricing, between the leading manufacturers (lenses not included, approx. list price as
of March 2007), with features supporting HD ENG including pool feed, HD-SDI
and (relatively) low compressed HD bitrate (excluding HD camcorders with
legacy HD CODECs):
Compressed HD bit-rate
JVC GY-HD250U $ 9,995 20Mbps
Grass Valley Infinity DMC $ 23,000 50 or 75Mbps
Sony PDW-F350 $ 25,800 18 or 25 or 35Mbps
Panasonic AJ-HPX2000 $ 27,000 50 or 100Mbps
Later in the Report, we will analyze in-depth the related cost issues, which will show
a remarkable cost advantage for the ProHD ENG system, and show how ProHD can
in fact outperform the competing systems overall, in microwave, ENG Van, ingest,
editing and archival issues.
Once you decide to go HD news, then equipment selection is governed by the
products available (and working in a system) at that time. With the ever advancing
state of the consumer electronics technologies and the availability of consumer HD
camcorders for less than $2,000, and semi-pro HD camcorders for less than $3,000,
it is even more essential that your local news presentation to your home audience be
HD, and very soon. But it is difficult to justify spending $40,000 or more each for
professional HD ENG camcorders with lenses for the news department these days.
This Report may clarify this and other choices for your management team, and,
perhaps, be great news for your CFO.