[cerebros]

Just been looking at Canon's camcorder section of their website and I see that the new low-end 800 series all feature a widescreen mode as standard. Considering that these can be had for about £300 these sound good for those of us who want widescreen but aren't into camcording enough to buy a higher end model. I'd assume other manufacturers will also be bringing widescreen down their ranges.

Having said that, I'm not quite sure how the widescreen mode works, whether it's cropping a 4:3 image or a true 16:9 capture that gets squashed down when recorded.

The reason for this confusion is that the description for the MV830i says

Originally Posted by Canon Website

Wide Screen
The MV830i's high-resolution 16:9 mode is great for shooting cinemascope video and for playing back on widescreen monitors. At the push of a button, the camcorder automatically switches the LCD to Letterbox and uses the full width of the CCD sensor to capture true widescreen footage

which makes it sound like it's cropping a 4:3 whereas in the MV800 series overview it says:

Originally Posted by Canon Website

High resolution 16:9 mode
As well as the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, the MV800 series supports high resolution 16:9; similar to the ratio used for wide screen film-based movies. (An image’s aspect ratio is the ratio of an image’s width to its height.) When shooting in 16:9 mode with EIS off, the MV800 series camcorders utilise a full 540K pixels. This not only gives a higher resolution than previous models, it results in a wider angle of view which allows you to get more into each shot.

This would seem to suggest a 16:9 capture from the chip given that it's supposed to use 540k pixels in 16:9 mode.

Anyone got any ideas on which it actually is?

[wicket]

According to the Sony site more lines are added in the recording stage to give true widescreen recording. I have a Sony DCR-HC18E, it does the widescreen recording. The picture on the view finder goes to a widescreen picture with black bars top and bottom and the lens is supposed to go wider. The Sony website had a good description of it.

[cerebros]

Originally Posted by wicket

According to the Sony site more lines are added in the recording stage to give true widescreen recording. I have a Sony DCR-HC18E, it does the widescreen recording. The picture on the view finder goes to a widescreen picture with black bars top and bottom and the lens is supposed to go wider. The Sony website had a good description of it.

That's OK for Sony's models, but I was wondering what Canon's do, as in the past other manufacturers have simply cropped a 4:3 image, from what I understand.

[Wayne Moule]

cerebros

Have seen these?

[cerebros]

Originally Posted by Wayne Moule

cerebros

Have seen these?

Yeah, saw them the next day after the original post, plus the HC39E & HC42E on one of the linking pages, although I think Sony were already well served for 16:9 capable cameras in the mid-range and up anyway, unlike Canon.

I'd be interested if anyone can make an informed opinion on whether the move to CMOS technology in the Sony DCR-PC1000E is going to make as big a difference to picture quality as claimed.