THE HDTV CAMCORDER AND THE MARCH TO MARKETPLACE REALITY

A complex 12-year development of high-definition television (HDTV) pro duction standards has vied with consecutive generations of HDTV progra m origination equipment. While aspiring to the full promise of the eve r-evolving standards, equipment designers have grappled with a multipl icity of marketplace realities as separately defined by the world's br oadcasters and program producers, HDTV program origination continues t o be frustrated by unrealistic equipment costs and a lack of mobile ba ttery-powered HDTV acquisition systems. The latter is central to the p roper exploitation of the significant enhancement to television imager y latent within the technical parameters defined by the latest SMPTE 2 74M HDTV production standard, This paper describes a bold development thrust that sought to simultaneously lower costs and produce a high-pe rformance, highly compact, HD acquisition system. Thee technological l eap from contemporary HDTV cameras and digital recorders to an all-dig ital one-piece HD camcorder called for the best in engineering innovat ion, pragmatic design decisions, rind a massive commitment to custom-b uilt VLSI, This paper specifically describes the prototype of the 1920 x 1035 (SMPTE 260M) based camcorder. A modified product based on the later SMPTE 274M standard (1920 x 1080 format) will follow.