Considering getting a Sony HC40 "true widescree". How much more pic do u get?

[spruceland]

I've researched and have found the word "true widescreen" used many times for the Sony HC40. I then read on a few sites that it not actually true widescreen. I believe the new Canons are going to be true widesceen; however the one I'm mostly interested in is the Sony HC40 which is also widescreen.

My understanding w/ "true widescreen" is that all the pixels get used and none are wasted unlike many cameras that tout that feature but lose pixels and are not true widescreen. I will eventually have a widescreen tv (its the future).

1. I was was wondering when you record in 16:9, how much more picture do you get (if any)?

2. Also, are there any new cameras under $600 that offer this besides the Sony at this time?

3.How about upcoming cameras?

Any comments are always welcome. Thanks

[MGRip]

Fake widescreen - the camcorder takes full frame (720X576/720X480), crop the top and the bottom and squeezing the frame back to the full frame. The quality might be as same as you take 4:3 video and crop it, in some camcorders even worse.

True widescreen - the camcorder "accelerates" it's ccd to even more wide angle, since its never actually uses the full ability of the ccd. then it uses the full frame hight of the frame (576/480) and scale down the width to 720. So you get true 720X576(/480) with 16:9 aspect ratio. A good sample:
http://www.videomax.ru/tests/hires/matrix-compil.jpg

However I've found at dvspot.com: "16:9 wide (on/off) - take widescreen videos; it's not clear about whether this is "true" widescreen or just a digital effect" (http://www.dvspot.com/reviews/sony/hc40-review/index.shtml)
If it's not clear, that means that the widescreen is probably very quality in this camcorder.

I hope I helped,
Mark.

[spruceland]

Thanks, now I'm debating whether or not to jump in and get the HC40 or hold off for a few months to see what's new on the horizon that offers true widescreen. Thanks for the picture diagram.

[chilledoutuk]

I recently acquired a canon mv500 and this camera is capable of producing 16:9 non anamorphic video however the ensuing video does look less defined mainly because of a portion of the 4:3 native CCD not being used.
You see many people know that the resolution of the CCD is normally much higher than the actual amount that is required for a PAL Digital Video frame 720x576 pixels.

I remember reading on a dv forum someone saying that a person in a camera shop told them that the pixel count of the CCD does not matter as the resolution of the video is much lower.

In an ideal world the CCD’s resolution would be identical to that of the video we are recording so that the video would not have to resized.
But this is not the case as the more sensitive CCDS have a higher resolution and the image is resized from the 4:3 CCD’s native resolution for example 540k pixels to that of the PAL Video standard 720x576 415k pixels.
When resizing a image the Higher the resolution of the source the sharper and more defined the resized image will look.

Well when recording true 16:9 on a camera with a native 4:3 CCD there is a portion of the CCD's resolution that cannot be used due to the differing aspects and this therefore lowers the overall resolution of the source from the CCD that the camcorder will generate the video frame from.

This in the end results in a image with a slightly lower definition and a slight blurriness in comparison to the video recorded in the cameras native 4:3 format.

There are cameras that boast high quality 1.3m pixels CCD’s on these I believe that the CCD’s Resolution is so much higher than that of the video frames that the quality of creating video in its non native aspect should not be impacted noticeably at all.
When using cameras with 3CCDs there should not be any noticeable difference in the definition of the recorded video when recording in 16:9 or 4:3 aspects.

[theReal]

I have recently shot a few widescreen pictures (anamorphic) with a Canon XL1S - they looked fantastic.
However the picture quality of the XL1S is superb anyways and I haven't checked for quality differences to the normal 4:3 mode.