The new Everio GZ-HD7 is just hitting stores here in Oz this week, and I got a chance to have a good look at it on the JVC stand. Best of all, they had some footage shot on the GZ-HD7 on a Full HD TV on their stand, and this stuff looked fucking unbelievable. Seriously, I don’t care what camera you are comparing that footage to, this camera is shoots your family like you’re on a soundstage… add some good lights and this knocks everything else in its class out of the park. I even gave the JVC rep a good, cold stare and asked if this REALLY was footage shot on the HD7. He didn’t flinch.
And this is an STFU to Sony, who told us at a launch earlier in the year that they went the AVCHD path partly because HDV wasn’t compatible with hard drive recording. It didn’t make sense at the time, and makes zero sense now others have done it. Because not only does the HD7 shoot full 1920 x 1080 (in an adjusted MPEG-2 mode), it can also shoot an HDV compatible stream at 1440 x 1080.
More info, and pictures, after the jump.
We’ll get our hands on one of these ASAP and see how it stands up when the footage isn’t being shot under optimal lighting conditions (the footage was all in a studio).
The extra pixels do seem to give you a lot on screen. Find a shop they’re showing this footage at and take a basket to catch your jaw in.
Any complaints? Yes. This still demands a streamed capture into your editor. No file transfer yet, so pulling your footage in will still be a real-time process like from tape. Annoying when you know there is a file sitting there but you just can’t grab it and use it. C’mon guys, lets get this last hurdle sorted!
The other part of the system they were showing is the ‘DVD Station’, which lets you dump your HD footage onto a DVD as a file. The station acts as a high-def playback device from DVD, so you can watch what you’ve made without having to commit to either HD-DVD or Blu-ray just yet. At $699, it is a bit expensive for a one-trick device, but it is very portable which is an advantage.