DMN Interview: JVC’s Dave Walton
Feb. 17, 2004 -
JVC has a master plan to democratize the HDTV production world, and has already released the first few pieces of this puzzle. Dave Walton, National Marketing Communications Manager of JVC Professional Products Company talked to Digital Media Net’s Charlie White about the company’s new JY-HD10U high definition camcorder and its implications for HD production. He also drops a few hints about the family of products the company plans to build around the new camcorder, and gives us an idea or two about what we can expect from JVC at this year’s NAB in April.DMN: Let’s talk about JVC’s JY-HD10U high definition camcorder. It was released just last June and the price tag was under four grand. I understand it’s really popular right now. How are sales going?
Walton: Sales are meeting our expectations. We didn’t forecast extraordinarily high because this is a new market category, and we wanted to see how the market would respond to a product like this. We’re very pleased with the results we’ve gotten, not from just a sales point of view, but from the standpoint of what customers are telling us they’re doing with the product. I think it’s always very gratifying to see your products being used in clever, different ways.
DMN: There was apparently a lot of thinking that went in to the product before you introduced it, about a new market category. Can you tell us about what some of these people are doing with the camera? What is this category and who is in it?
Walton: We have seen a need in the industry to do something in HD that’s really affordable. You look at the overall industry, and you’ll see the adoption of HD programming at an accelerating rate. That’s pretty common knowledge; even major prime-time TV shows like ER are now available in high definition. As digital cable grows it’s able to provide HD, along with terrestrial and satellite channels. We’re simultaneously seeing a widespread implementation of high definition displays such as rear-projection television, plasma display panels, LCDs, and direct-view sets that have HD inputs or HD capability. I think it goes without saying the FCC mandates come into play here – after July, half of the TV receivers 36" and larger will have to have ATSC tuners built in, and a year later, 100% will. And at that time, half of the ones less than 36" will also have to have that capability. With an increasing number of these displays out there ready to accept high definition, the viewers are ready. The problem here is the lack of affordable production, processing and distribution equipment.
DMN: And that’s the niche that JVC saw.
Walton: That’s the big hole that we saw. So our response was to develop an affordable line of products that would include cameras, camcorders, recorders, storage devices, processing, monitors, display products, plasmas, projectors and so forth. The specific point regarding JVC’s response that I think is very important is that efficiency is the key to affordability. Lower bit-rates are used where practical. High definition is very data-intensive. If you can reduce the amount of data to process and store, you can reduce the cost. Now, you have to do that, but at the same time maintaining close-to-original program quality throughout the encoding process. You do that by using high quality encoders, and all-digital transfers, so you can maintain that quality through the process. What we decided to do was to use industry-standard compression and protocols. It just didn't make sense to go out on our own with something that’s not standard.
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DMN: Of course, when there are already a lot of codecs and protocols in place that you can use.
Walton: Yes. The compression that digital broadcast is using – the MPEG 2 transport stream, is exactly the compression that we create and record on HDV, and it’s also the compression we use on DVHS. So that compressed material, if you didn’t do anything with it, could be broadcast through a digital broadcast system, and displayed without uncompressing it all the way to an ATSC receiver. The quality would be maintained because you haven’t had to decompress, re-compress, transcode, convert, etc. So using the broadcast compression system makes a lot of sense, and since many components in this system will be mass produced, the overall system is likely to be more affordable. MPEG2 is an open industry standard. JVC had a lot to do with the development of MPEG2 in the early days. We’re one of the original licensors of the MPEG2 format, so we’re, I guess you could say, one of the creators of MPEG2. But it is an open industry standard. The HDV tape format has been adopted by other key manufacturers – Sony, Canon, Sharp. And support’s been announced by most of the major nonlinear editing companies for HDV. Where necessary, we will use an HD-SDI interface to the proprietary and broadcast higher-end systems. So you’re not boxed in with HDV, or low-cost DVHS. You can go to those other systems through an HD-SDI interface.
DMN: Can you tell our readers what the difference is between these low-cost HDV cameras and the high-end that would require HD-SDI – the broadcast HD equipment?
Walton: You mentioned cameras. That’s a whole system in itself. A camcorder, for example, is comprised of a lens, imaging chip or chips, and signal processing within the camera. Then there is an encoder to take the huge amount of data that’s created within a high definition image and compress it. Then you need the ability to record it onto a tape, so there’s a storage mechanism – a tape or whatever. The difference between the higher end, say a $60K or $70K camera and a $4000 camera? Well, I suppose the first place to start is the lens. Since images are presented on higher quality monitors in more detail, lenses are likely to be more expensive for high definition cameras. Lenses that are used on a $60,000 camera often cost many times the price of the JVC JY-HD10U. I don’t think anybody would suggest that the lens that’s on a $4000 camera – JVC’s or anybody else’s – is equivalent to a lens you would put on a $60,000 camera. Some high-definition production-quality lenses run $80K to $100,000 themselves.
DMN: Just for the lens.
Walton: Yes. So the piece of glass has something to do with it. That’s one difference. If you’re shooting a Hollywood major motion picture, and you’re used to Panavision, this is not a surprise to you. Don’t expect the equivalent of that performance from a small, hand-held camcorder. So that’s probably the first difference.
The imaging sensors are actually quite a new area, because the chip that’s in the JVC JY-HD10 camera is a new chip that’s not been used in any of the other cameras. The chip business changes. And it will continue to change. What’s available today, what’s available two years from now, I would definitely look for lower-cost, higher-density chips to proliferate in the future. This is just one of these chips. The fact that it’s a single chip and not a three-chip accounts for some tradeoffs.
We do have full-pixel resolution of the HDTV signal; but, quite honestly, a single chip camera does not have the finesse of a three-chip camera with respect to handling colors, highlights and that sort of thing. So there are some tradeoffs that are made. When it comes to the compression that’s used, that’s really very specific to the actual format – in this case, it’s HDV, so we’re using an MPEG2 codec, and we are compressing to a bit rate of 19 megabits per second [mbits/sec.]. Now, the low bitrate or low bandwidth characteristic is both a plus and a minus. Naturally, when you compress to 19 megabits per second, it’s not a lossless compression, so there is some image loss during the compression process. Remember, all compression involves tradeoffs – even DV compresses five-to-one, so it is a necessary thing that we have to do, and the result is actually very pleasing with the JY-HD10. And I might point out that 19 mbits/sec. is the same bitrate that’s been given to all of the broadcasters for their over-the-air broadcasts. As I said, this is a standard MPEG2 transport stream that meets the ATSC specifications for broadcast. Well, when you watch a digital broadcast, say, The Tonight Show, for example, and you’re watching on your brand new several-thousand-dollar HDTV display and it looks just gorgeous, you’re watching a 19 mbit/sec. data stream. While it’s a compression that does have loss – and nobody’s going to suggest that it doesn’t – its resulting quality is one that is fully capable of meeting the requirements of the broadcast community.
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