SD remains strong

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Despite all marketing and hype around HD, good old Standard Definition is still remarkably strong, as a recent survey by SCRI shows:

[...] recording formats are always a bell weather of trends in our industry. This year we see expected large penetration for SD format, but surprisingly no HD formats reached more than HDV (25.5%), despite the fact that HDV is a relatively new player in the market. HDCAM still has over 21% penetration, with DVCPRO HD slightly lower at about 17%. Neither reached the remaining penetration of Betacam SP (well over 50% of the market still has Betacam SP). Penetration of HDCAM has remained essentially constant since the last Survey. In SD products DV based recorders (DV, DVCPRO, DV CAM, and variants) are present in more than 80% of all facilities.

Which fits into our experience here in our production company. We do get hired by some bigger names, such as BBC, MTV or ABC, along with national and regional TV. We also do a bit of industrial films. And not once did we have a request for HD.

The market is just not yet ready for it, to pay a premium for a quality that most viewers will not see.

That said, it will be interesting once true HD TV-sets become standard in the households, and parallel cameras such as the RED One make it possible to deliver HD content without extra costs.