Craig [5/22]: I guess my point here is that the most important consideration is an all progressive chain. After that it's all about the perceived quality of the pictures. Dan [5/23]: Totally agree. Craig [5/22]: Where it makes sense we will see improved distribution chains. This is already happening with digital cinema, and you might be able to deliver higher quality to some of the venues on campus. Dan [5/23]: And off campus! We would use 1080@60P for transmission of live events to remote locations through the Internet2 (see http://www.internet2.edu/). These events would be for many purposes including research, live instruction and sports. While a fat pipe like this might not be available to all now, it will be some day. Digital Cinema is another one of our applications. Craig [5/22]: It will be a long time before the production infrastructure of 1080@60 exists, especially for live origination. Dan [5/23]: This sentence doesn't correlate with the statement which started this line of discussion: Ron Economos: "1080p@60 (or 50) emission is next. IMHO, it will be here much sooner than many folks think." Dan: "But I question that because there is a lot going against it. First, there isn't a lot of production equipment that can do it....I see a production chain for 2K and 4K media developing before 1080p@60 based on what I saw at this year's NAB. I could be completely our to lunch here and I would love to hear feedback from the experts!" Ron: "1080p@60 H.264 encoders and decoders are just around the corner. Should be able to buy one in 2008. ATSC will be left in the cold unless they adopt H.264 for the primary program." Then the discussion turned to the merits (or lack thereof) of producing 1080@60P. It sounds like we agree that there is not and probably will not be 1080@60P production equipment in the near future. Craig [5/22]: But I would suggest skipping 1080@60P cameras and move into the higher realm of Digital Cinema - for example the RED camera. You can still process this stuff at 1080@60P, in fact this would be a good thing to do. But you also need to provide the students with REAL WORLD training, and you're not going to be able to put cheap 1080@60P camcorders on their shoulders. I would take another look at some of the 720P camcorders out there. Dan [5/23]: While I would prefer to not have to maintain a bunch of different formats, codec, hardware, etc., this is exactly what I must do. Our students will start out with a small format camera and solid state media. We will be ditching tape so that rules out the Canon and Sony unless they come up with a nonlinear based (i.e. tapeless) recording format. I have heard bad things about real world use of hard disk drive recorders mounted to cameras. So solid state through SD or P2 media will be our goal. Then there will be a more professional level of equipment for upper level classes, News production and student produced programming. The equipment will be on the level of the Panasonic P2 or Sony Blu-Ray products. I was pleased to see Panasonic adopt AVC and drop the DVCProHD format. And last, there is the professional production department. This is where we would like higher end productions, both live and post produced. The point of a 1080@60P production chain would be to produce at the level necessary for the customer up to and including 1080@60P, but also to drop to 1080@30P, 1080@60i, 720P, 480P, and even lower if need be. Certainly a 2K camera would get us there if the camera/recorder package existed (and it might with the potential RED camera). But I doubt there will be any live production equipment available in the next year or two. Craig [5/22]: You could do the chroma keying live and record the results. Dan [5/23] One could in the studio if they knew what background they were going to use before the shoot! Pre-production is often lacking. Craig [5/22]: So set your sights high, but be both flexible and practical....Don't let the big numbers have too much influence. Focus on the ability to maintain high quality levels throughout the chain. Dan [5/23]: But I'm an engineer! Are not bigger (or lower) numbers always better? No, your advice is well received. So I think am at the same place that at started from: build an infrastructure for future and bigger formats as reasonably practical, produce live in an HD-SDI world and dream of the day when interlacing and transcoding will be done away with. Dan Grimes