Hello everyone,
Glad to be a part of this website.
As the title states, seeing as how the prices of many prosumer HD cameras have dropped to the $3,000 mark, I've been considering HD as the medium of choice for my newly formed production company. I'm not doing it to simply avoid being obsolete -- I just think that, in principle, HD will always offer a quality advantage over most SD cameras, especially when viewing on an HD-ready TV.
So, being fairly new to the "HD game," could anyone fill me in on any of the technical must-knows of shooting HD? I mainly want to know what type of setup I'll need to give me the most options for my HD-produced content to be viewed by everyone -- SDTV users, internet streaming, etc. For instance, I don't want to be left hanging when I find that someone with an SDTV can't view my work. I've heard about down converters, but I don't hear about them being used often. In fact, I don't know much about them at all. Are they mainly used for broadcast, or for converting any HD footage for viewing on SDTVs? I should also mention that most of my content will be streamed/viewed online. Anything I should know about HD for online?
To sum it all up hypothetically: Would a Canon XHA1 and FCP HD software suffice? In which cases would it not?
Anything else along these lines I should know about getting prepared to shoot HD?
Any help would be appreciated.