has the Sony HDW-F500 been discontinued ?

[Walter Biscardi]

It’s still on the Sony site as a product for sale.

https://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/ProductPrint?id=81677

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Bob Zelin]

Walter –
I believe that you might be wrong – I went to this URL, and saw the HDW-F500, but when I looked on the same site under VTR’s, there was no HDW-F500 listed. So I did the same search (under http://www.sony.com) for the Sony PVM-20L5/1, and found this monitor too, but I know for a fact that this monitor is discontinued by Sony, and is not found under the normal “browse” under http://www.sony.com/professional. Neither is the HDW-F500, which gives me the (shocked) opinion that this has been discontinued.

But I could be wrong !

Bob Zelin

[Steve Covello]

Here’s the skinny: I just sold my used HDW-F500 for $41,750 after having it for only 2 years and barely using it. I originally paid $69,000 for it used from The Broadcast Store, and it had the PD and DC boards, and about half of its brush/head life left, which would’ve been at least another 1500 hours [about a $3000-4000 repair]. Why did it depreciate so much? According to one broker I spoke to, Sony is coming out with a new line of HDCam decks that, I suppose, each have various capabilities so that someone who only does 1080i doesn’t have to buy the whole package of features if they are not needed. So what does Sony do? They sell all of their B-stock new HDW-F500 decks for around $45,000 thus making the used market fall through the floor.

So my guess is that you can get a new F500 if you want, but it it will likely be a demo model, and, like the PVM20L5/1, you will have a tough time getting parts for it [like processor boards, not rollers, etc.] in the future. Luckily, it seems like it is a very robust deck and a sound investment.

steve covello
double wide post

[Walter Biscardi]

What does your Sony rep say Bob? Are they still in pipeline or are they saying they’re about to go away?

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[David Battistella]

I have heard the the Panny D5 decks are much more robust and require a lot less maintenance than the F-500, plus it is a full uncompressed deck. Yes. I know the problem is, who will take delivery on this format, but, from the sources I have spoken to the F-500 has a lot of problems, are expensive to maintain and are not the “built to last machines” people are used to from SONY.

Bob, it really looks like there is going to be a great widening between “real” HD and (HDCAM, HD SR, D5) and pretend HD (HDV, etc) To me this looks like SONY’s way of cutting the great divide in teh market and separating PRO from everything else. So their attitude will be, “want to play with the big boys, pay the big bucks”

Ah, Japanese marketing tactics. You gotta love it.

David

[Walter Biscardi]

[David Battistella] “Bob, it really looks like there is going to be a great widening between “real” HD and (HDCAM, HD SR, D5) and pretend HD (HDV, etc) To me this looks like SONY’s way of cutting the great divide in teh market and separating PRO from everything else. So their attitude will be, “want to play with the big boys, pay the big bucks””

I was kind of thinking the same thing. HDV has really cheapened the definition of what High Definition really is. It will be really interesting to see how the Varicam Market will respond to all of this. Will the Varicam start to take on a larger market share as it will be a real cost effective HD solution, from aquisition to Post, over the HDCAM solution.

I’m already looking forward to April and NAB 2006!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[David Battistella]

HDV is not High def it is HDV. It is purely prosumer and not a really viable pro format. Sony did not even put deck control into the deck. it pretends to be a standard but is not interchangable between companies (JVC footage does not play back on Sonay decks and Vice Versa.

The Varicam is 5 years old now (they seem to be half way through the alphabet on model numbers already) and the newest 9 thousand dollar camera from panasonic has all of the varicam features (albiet on a 1/3inch chip with a fixxed lens.

Sony is promising a blue laser variable frame rate camera that records HD in the range of 35K at NAB so let’s see how panny responds to that.

The real problem is that the broadcasters need to be coming up with an “industry standard” because there are no more industry standards, there is film and there is everything else. The nice thing about film is when you spend the money up front on quality you are not going to cheap it up after that. So if you shoot film, you aren’t going to transfer it to DVCPRO or HDV, you would continue with a high quality workflow. The problem is that people want to go the other way and that’s where standards fall apart.

Now, I also have a completely rebelious side that wants anything to emerge and solve all the problems of spending big bucks in production, but in a way Bob Zelin is right. It takes a bit of dough to play with the big boys.

David

[Gary Adcock]

[David Battistella] “I have heard the the Panny D5 decks are much more robust and require a lot less maintenance than the F-500, plus it is a full uncompressed deck.”

Sorry d,
D5 is compressed on tape –about as much as the SR does , but in a different manner.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Tim Martin]

I was told by my VAR months ago that it has been discountinued. We were looking at what it would cost to get one in our shop and he only a couple left in stock. I would expect that the used market would raise their prices now that it can’t be bought new. There are all kinds of new models, but the VAR had been told that it was a move to start pushing SR as the mastering format for 108024p even in 4:2:2 mode. None of this was told to me directly from a Sony rep, so take it for what it’s worth. Made sense to me though.

Tim

[David Battistella]

Thanks Gary.

d