Cheapo HDV?

According to camcorderinfo.com, Sony is working on a new budget HDV camera, the HC3. Since the HC1 is retailing for around $1500 right now, while the HC3 doesn’t seem to be much lower in spec than the HC1, if it came in at $1299 it might be, psychologically at least, a more reasonable camera for home movies. Of course the big news will be when one of these pushes below $1000. Then we can start throwing them off cliffs without worry …

Celtx: Because you’ve been sleeping too much

I was recently shown a program called Celtx, a free (but not OSS) script development tool. It’s based on some of the backend stuff from Firefox and gives the commercial scriptwriting tools a pretty serious challenge. I highly encourage folks who are interested in script development to take a look – not only will it help you collect your ideas and write the actual script, but it will also help with scheduling, budgeting and a number of other tasks related to your production. It runs on OSX, Windows and Linux and seems relatively production-ready. Anybody have other preferences in script development tools?

Where hath all the CRTs gone? (Rant)

It’s starting to get really hard to get a CRT video monitor. This makes me sad. I’ve always been a big fan of the Sony PVM series, but they are not long for this world (limited stock is still available). The replacement is Sony’s LUMA LCD line. Now, go and read the Luma FAQ, especially the question “Is the quality of the LUMA line as good as the PVM?” – their answer? “No.”

So why discontinue the PVMs? Arg.

Apparently they’re still making the 16:9 BVM series monitors, though even that is rather ambiguous. I’ve heard from at least one person that Sony is dropping those as well. This confusion led me to call Sony. Big mistake. Read on to learn how my head exploded.

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Why are there no good review sites of this stuff?

Part of the inspiration for starting this site was the utter lack of decent review sites for video gear. At best you’ll find reviews of cameras, and even then they tend to be “dude in his bedroom shooting out his window” type of stuff.

Case in point, I’m trying to find a decently priced HMI kit. B&H has plenty to chose from. Why isn’t there a site I can go to to read reviews? Hear about quality? At best I’m left searching forums looking for answers. Someone should get some proper VC together and start an all-encompasing production gear review site. Anyone want to volunteer?