I'm stunned! Camcorder to 1080p monitor with HDMI!

[alegator]

I own a Sony HC3 HD camcorder since 2006. I never had a chance to watch my recorded tapes in a 1080p LCD TV, but I did so yesterday and the quality is just amazing, what a difference it makes compared to watching them in my PC LCD monitor. The way I watched them was by connecting the camcorder to the 1080p monitor with an HDMI cable. My question is, how can I play those videos in the 1080p LCD without using the camcorder as a player (so to avoid wasting the heads)? I thought about capturing those HD tapes to my PC via firewire, generating HD mpeg files (11gb/hour aprox). And then, how can I burn a DVD-DL with those files so to play them with a regular DVD player with HDMI output.?? What requirements must the DVD player meet in order to be HD compatible? What software is needed to create the DVD? a DL DVD is 9Gb so it won't hold 1 hour of HD video...so should I split the movie? I'm not thinking in BluRay as it is too expensive for now...thanks.

[guns1inger]

You can't play them back with a standard DVD player. Standard DVD players are restricted to standard definition resolutions. You need to get a bluray player or if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, use them as media extenders and player the files that way (you may have to encode them to H264 to do this)

[zoobie]

I'm in the same boat with my HC5 and have never actually seen the HDV on a TV
waiting until 2010 which will allow a price drop and the consumer software to develope some more, too
hence the sig

[alegator]

You can't play them back with a standard DVD player. Standard DVD players are restricted to standard definition resolutions. You need to get a bluray player or if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, use them as media extenders and player the files that way (you may have to encode them to H264 to do this)

What about a PC videocard or a laptop with HDMI output? I could play the captured HD file with say PowerDVD and hook my PC/Laptop to the 1080p LCD TV with the HDMI cable to watch it. Is that possible?

[edDV]

You can't play them back with a standard DVD player. Standard DVD players are restricted to standard definition resolutions. You need to get a bluray player or if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, use them as media extenders and player the files that way (you may have to encode them to H264 to do this)

What about a PC videocard or a laptop with HDMI output? I could play the captured HD file with say PowerDVD and hook my PC/Laptop to the 1080p LCD TV with the HDMI cable to watch it. Is that possible?

You can do it with a DVI-D to HDMI cable from most display cards. HDMI out just adds part of the HDCP DRM chain needed to play Blu-Ray.

The video quality depends on the display card deinterlace processing and proper player setup. In general the quality will be less than that direct HDV to HDMI connection from the camcorder but the display cards and PC software players are improving.

[alegator]

And what about burning the captured HD Mpeg2 to Blu-Ray? I would think that since it involves encoding the captured HD video to the Blu-Ray format, then not even Blu-Ray would reproduce the original 100% quality of playing the video directly from the camcorder (not to mention the time/resources wasted in the encoding).

[edDV]

That depends on the BluRay or media server player. Ideally they would play HDV format directly rather than reformatting for the BluRay standard similar to the way certain DVD players play divx/xvid or MPeg files.
https://www.videohelp.com/hd

People are sorting this out in the threads. You may not need to recode for a certain player, only change the container.

[alegator]

You may not need to recode for a certain player, only change the container.

What do you mean by "container"?
Also, I've seen at a friend's house a Sony standard DVD player with HDMI output connector in the back. What's the point of providing an HDMI output if the DVD player is a standard one (not Blu-Ray or HD-DVD)? Thanks

[redwudz]

alegator, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

Thanks,
Moderator redwudz

[dcsos]

What's the point of providing an HDMI output if the DVD player is a standard one

this is called upconvert:
When connected to your Hi Def TV using the HDMI output the Standard DVD is scaled to HD-compatible size or resolution

[edDV]

You may not need to recode for a certain player, only change the container.

What do you mean by "container"?
Also, I've seen at a friend's house a Sony standard DVD player with HDMI output connector in the back. What's the point of providing an HDMI output if the DVD player is a standard one (not Blu-Ray or HD-DVD)? Thanks

The player will accept certain container formats and not others. MPeg as a transport stream may not be acceptable. A program stream may be. This will depend on what the hardware player accepts beyond normal BluRay encoding.

A DVD player with HDMI out has an internal upscaler. Alternate is to send 480i or 480p to the HDTV and the TV will upscale. If the HDTV processor is older or cheap crap, the DVD player upscale will be superior. If you have a top line Sony XBR 6, the TV may upscale better.