What's the 'true' resolution of consumer-type DV camcorder?

[jeanl]

I've read a lot about DV (in particular this article pointed out by edDV (thanks for that!), and I know that the DV format specifies standard NTSC resolution (for NTSC DV) of 720x480.
Now, I'm wondering how much of that resolution is actually used by consumer type DV camcorder. I've tried to look for technical data on that (i.e., what kind of sensor they use, what the true sensor resolution is) but I have found nearly nothing.
I'm asking because I'm finding that the images I'm recording from my Sharp VLZ-5U DV camcorder (definitely NOT a high-quality camcorder ) are not of very high quality in terms of blocking, spatial resolution.
Do any of you know anything about the actual resolution such DV camcorders use? What kind of sensor sizes do they use? Do they perform spatial smoothing or any other tricks to reduce the bit rate before encoding?

This is a bit of a fuzzy question. Sorry about that...
jeanl

[edDV]

A camcorder has two sections, the "cam" and the "corder"

The "corder" section includes the analog I/O, DV codec, IEEE-1394 I/O and recording electronics/mechanicals. This section is very high quality and performs almost as well as the broadcast versions of DV (DVCAM and DVCPro).

The DV codec chips are often the same as used in the pro versions. A/D D/A converter and bandpass filtering may be somewhat lower quality.

Analog I/O recording performance at 1x exceeds any* broadcast analog recorder of the past including 2" Quadruplex, 1" Type C and Betacam SP.

Effective DV analog specs (limited by analog I/O components)

Luminance Bandwidth: 6-6.75MHz
Analog "horizontal lines of resolution" ~540
Chroma (UV) Bandwidth: 1.7MHz
Signal to Noise: ~ 55dB vs 45dB (S-VHS)

Now for the "cam". Well you get what you pay for and that is why Digital8, MiniDV and DVCPro camcorders range from $250 to $70,000

* one exception, the 8MHz IVC-9000. There may be other obscure formats.

[jeanl]

Now for the "cam". Well you get what you pay for and that is why Digital8, MiniDV and DVCPro camcorders range from $250 to $70,000.

yes, that's really what I'm insterested in... I'm wondering how bad the worse is, and if there are tests that can be run (and have been run) to measure true performance...
jeanl

[edDV]

Now for the "cam". Well you get what you pay for and that is why Digital8, MiniDV and DVCPro camcorders range from $250 to $70,000.

yes, that's really what I'm insterested in... I'm wondering how bad the worse is, and if there are tests that can be run (and have been run) to measure true performance...
jeanl

Read the reviews

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
http://www.dvspot.com/

They go through all the tests

basic hierarchy

budget single CCD (usually bigger is better)
prosumer single CCD (usually bigger is better)
budget 3CCD
prosumer 3CCD
------------------------------------------------------------
pro 3CCD cam with pro lens (quality mostly tracks lens at this point)
pro 3CCD cam with pro lens DVCPro-50 (4:2:2 recording)
DVCPro-HD
DVCPro-HD VariCam Cinema ~$70k with accessories
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&cata...elNo=AJ-HDC27F