Canon look to launch of XL H1 for HDTV market in Europe

Canon are looking forward to HD broadcasts taking off in Europe within the next 12 months.
The French Canal+ Group, German Premiere, and UK BSkyB are gearing up to launch dedicated HD channels, which means that European videomakers are discovering that there is a new market for High Definition content.
Canon’s XL H1, the company's first HD-capable camcorder, offers a comparatively low-cost, high quality, HD production tool.
The new 1.67 Megapixel 3CCD XL H1 inherits the familiar versatility of Canon’s XL series camcorders – it is capable of shooting Standard Definition (SD) movies just like other Canon camcorders, but it can also record 1080i HD movies.
Canon, with a reputation in the HD industry, has been making lenses for broadcast-standard cameras for years, and that expertise was called on during the design and development of the XL H1. Its new 20x zoom lens has the resolving power to match the quality requirements for HD.
Canon’s professional quality XL miniDV camcorders have long found favour amongst documentary makers and low-budget moviemakers: even Hollywood moviemakers have used XL series cameras, with films such as '28 Days Later' showcasing the cameras’ capabilities to great effect.
HDV is a cross-industry standard that was developed as an alternative to other HD formats and records movies onto the same miniDV cassettes used by the majority of camcorders. HDV offers a cheaper alternative to those other HD formats, and makes use of advanced and efficient MPEG-2 compression to fit the extra image data that defines HD onto the cassettes.
Canon boast that no other HDV camcorder has the studio versatility that comes with the option of HD-SDI output.
HD-SDI output, GENLOCK input and Time code input/output are all commonly found on much more expensive and much heavier camcorders, the kind of cameras that are used in television studios. With these connections the XL H1 can be used in a professional studio alongside other cameras and take part in multi-camera shoots.
With both HDV tape-based HD recording and HD-SDI output, the XL H1 offers an extensive range of production options to videomakers just as the demand for HD video is increasing.
(SP)