Customer Reviews

Guide to High Definition Video Production, The: Preparing for a Widescreen World

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Unfortunately, this is more a guide through history than through the inner workings of high def today. Too much has taken place since '96 for the book to be of much use to those trying to produce and post in HD now. The price tag is hefty, and should be an incentive for the authors to offer updates to those who've already purchased, and found the book sadly lacking.

C Perrone "Editor" is not incorrect about his assessment of the book: his review was written in 2005 about a book published in 1996 (and researched for close to two years prior to publication). I agree that it would be nice to write an update, but the publishers have never asked me.

A little history ...

I agree that, from today's perspective, it reads as a history of HDTV, but that's a problem with all books rooted in a particular point in time. In 1996 it was the first book to talk about HDTV production from the perspective of television and film production, not politics.

Ironically, we could have had a much better television system a decade ago. HDTV was, and still is, a production system, not a distribution system - except for theatrical environments. Incorporate a simple line doubler and it would be very hard to tell the difference between widescreen component D1 and most native HDTV resolutions in the average viewing environment.

All that needed to be done was for the FCC to decide to broadcast widescreen D1. This format could have been broadcast using existing towers, transmitters, and infrastructure with only minimal compression. However, the broadcasters looked at the introduction of HDTV as a way to grab enormous quantities of spectrum for free (HDTV bandwidth is six times that of NTSC bandwidth). It was always about politics and money, and when money and politics mix, the American public loses.

FWIW,
Clay Gordon
The author of this book.