Are cheap 1080p video cameras worth it?

Is the video on HD cameras heavily compressed?

• OK, first of all, I'm a newbie when it comes to HD video cameras, so please try to explain this simple to me. I want to buy a new video camera, and it seems more or less the only cameras available these days are cameras that records to memory cards. I bought one last year, it was a Sony, I can't remember the model offhand, but it was on sale at Wal-mart at the time and I think I paid around $400 for it, according to the salesperson it was one of the best models they had. What surprised me was that even when set to the highest quality, it told me I would be able to fit several hours (I think it was 4-6 hours) on a 16 Gb card. A regular 4.6gb DVD holds barely 1 hour of "XP" footage, and 2 hours with the standard SP quality. Now how can then this Sony camera hold 6 hours on 16Gb? I figured the compression must be very high and exactly as I imagined, the quality it produced was not great at all. Quality had visible pixels when the camera was panning from left/right, especially during quick movements. I mean, it wasn't awful, it was good enough to upload on the internet, but nowhere close to good enough to display on a big screen TV. This particular camera was not a HD cam, but right now I see prices on HD cameras have come down alot, so I'm thinking of buying one. HOWEVER, I am even more sceptic now as several of the ones I'm looking to buy says they hold several hours of true 1080p HD footage on a 16 gb card. I understand VOB vs. AVI uses totally different compression techniques, but when I captured Mini-DV tapes into raw (uncompressed) AVI files for editing and later saving them as VOB files, the files would become literally huge. Can someone please explain how the compression obviously can be so high even when filmed in HD quality, and try to make it simple so I can understand. I want to know if i should expect any kind of pixel-type artifacts in the HD cameras in the $500 range. Would the compression quality be any worse than you see on mainstream DVDs sold in the store? Keep in mind I am only wondering about the compression/pixels/similiar artifacts, not the quality that the camera's lens captures etc.

• Answer:

  Different cams use different compression engine (CHIPS) and that will give a huge difference during play back on large screens. Just storing image/video in high mega pixel or HD does not mean high clarity and higher view standard. Hence if you really want to buy a true HD cam , you need to go for higher end >1500$ cam which supports CF cards and have good image video stabilizers and better lense quality and GOOD COMPRESSION ENGINE(CHIP) the ones below 500 range are good for you tube and face book upload but not good for large plasma or LED/LCD screens as they use cheap compression engine (chip).