Panny take Plasma to 150″ . . . Doing!

I had opportunity to see Panasonic’s “world’s largest” 103″ plasma screen at the GV Expo… and now I feel like I’d been had. You can’t really claim the 103″ is the “world’s largest” if you, yourself have already tested and are boxing up a 150″ plasma to be shown at CES.

Engadget has a small gallery of photos of the incredibly impressive screen. It could well do with some better anti-glare glass on the front of it…

Red rolling shutter redux

There’s been a bit of discussion about the image distortion caused by the scanning (rolling) shutter used by CMOS chips which are starting to proliferate in the prosumer and professional video camera world. The key problem, as I have mentioned previously, is that the scanning imaging device is no longer sending the image solely to scanning displays- i.e. tube televisions. Today’s displays include plasma, LCD, DLP, OLED, etc. Most are progressive, but some include circuitry to display the image as if it were a scanning device.

Confused yet?

Mike Curtis, of HD For Indies, is very heavy into RED usage and promotion on his web site. RED is the video camera that I will agree is changing, or will change, the hardware business in the video industry. I checked in with Mike about the “rolling shutter” issue…

Rolling shutter? – Pick the right tool for the job.

At DVXuser, there’s a detailed article called Sensor Artifacts and CMOS Rolling Shutter by Barry Green. He discusses, and does a very good job at showing a phenomenon whereby the image captured by a camcorder’s imaging chip is not gathered all at once (what I’ll call “progressive” like a frame of film behind a shutter) but may end up being collected across the chip like a farmer collecting corn from his field. This can create footage that has unique problems. He says:

While CMOS and CCD sensors do the same basic job (gathering light and turning it into a video image), they go about it in different ways, and the differences can have very significant impact on your footage… CMOS sensors (equipped with “rolling shutters”) can exhibit skew, wobble, and partial exposure; CCD sensors are immune to those effects. And a CMOS sensor with a “global shutter” would also be immune to them, but since no current CMOS camcorders are equipped with global shutters, a camcorder buyer needs to be aware of what the implications of a rolling shutter would be.

As I read through his article, I thought back to using tube video cameras.

HD-101, a reference for your friends and family.

For the most part, readers of this blog are tech savvy folks that can actually recite the two different ATSC HD frame sizes off the top of their heads.

This is something mere mortals (i.e. usually everyone else in our families) simply cannot, or care not to do.

But then, when any of those folks need camcorder advice, or computer help, or digital camera assistance, they turn to us. As if knowledge about how to shoot and edit professional video equals a complete encyclopediac knowledge of every consumer camcorder, computer, software problem & how to fix it.

But there’s now help from a retail friend…