Opportunity Lost: Sony's Fails to Capitalize on the Large CCD of DCR-PC330

by Robin Liss
Published on Aug 25, 2003 12:00 AM



When I first heard rumors of a 1/3 in. CCD chip on the Sony DCR-PC120BT replacement, I got cautiously excited. When the rumors were confirmed by the Japanese announcement of the DCR-PC300 I began to think that there might be a real revolution going on in video quality. When I found out that the chip on the US version of the DCR-PC300, the DCR-PC330 was really 1/3 in. I thought that the day was finally here when manufacturers were going to pay real attention to video and low light quality instead of useless features - after years of waiting, I thought the day was finally here. When I read 7 LUX as the low light rating on the DCR-PC330 my heart sank along with all my hopes for some real positive change in the camcorder industry.

The key to video quality is not the number of pixels on a chip, but the size of that chip. For video quality, it really doesn't matter if a chip is 1 Megapixel, 2 Megapixel or 100 Megapixel. Yes, there are many variables in video quality, including the lens, the processing, but most important is the CCD and it's size. A larger CCD brings in more light than a smaller one. More light means more vivid pictures in well lit situations and better low light performance. Professional (and by professional I mean $10,000-$100,000 camcorders) include 1/2 in. to 2/3 in. CCDs. Prosumer camcorders, those above $2,000 but under $5,000 typically include 1/3 in. CCDs. They also include three CCDs for better color definition, but their quality low light performance is delivered by the large physical size of the CCDs.

Quick camcorder history lesson. Over the past five years we've been moving in the wrong direction with regards to CCD size. Manufacturers have been constantly trying to shrink down camcorders to make them more and more portable - but the cost has been the video quality. To shrink a camcorder, you need to shrink the imaging system and the CCD. We used to have 1/3 in. CCDs on camcorders. Then came the wave of 1/4 in. CCDs and we complained that they were too small and produced poor video under low light circumstances. Then came the 1/4.7 in. CCD from Sony, and it was a negative step but not huge. Then came wide adoption of the 1/6 in. CCD and low light performance went out the window in an effort to make a smaller camcorder.

When I heard that the DCR-PC330 was going to include a 1/3 in. CCD I thought that the trend had been reversed and we were moving towards camcorders with better video quality. We have seen some hints of this movement over the past 6 months, not towards larger CCDs, but towards 3 CCD systems instead of 1 CCD systems in the consumer range PV-DV953 and PV-GS70 camcorders from Panasonic. Three CCDs instead of one is another way to improve video quality (though it doesn't really effect low light performance much). I remember hinting how happy I was to folks at Sony when the official word came out of Japan.

Sony has squashed my hopes and dreams. In an effort to make the camcorder small, Sony took all the advantages out of the DCR-PC330's 1/3 in. CCD. They put poor quality optics in the camcorder and small optics in the camcorder which eliminates any low light performance improvements that the larger CCD would have delivered. Sony isn't even disputing this. The official Sony literature states that the LUX rating (the rating of a camcorder's low light performance, the lower the better) of the DCR-PC330 is 7. That's the same as the LUX rating on the DCR-TRV33 and DCR-TRV38 which include a smaller 1/4.7 in. CCD and cost $900 and $1,000 respectively. Although the DCR-PC330 costs $1,700, it's 7 LUX rating is worse than that of the $600 DCR-TRV19 (Review, Specs, $372)! If a product's primary purpose is shooting video, wouldn't you think spending more money and upgrading to the more expensive model would mean you would get better video quality? Apparently not.

Of course we won't know the true low light performance until there are some independent tests of the camcorder, however if Sony says the LUX rating is 7 - it's certainly not going to test better, they would have no incentive to underestimate their LUX rating. I asked Sony's US Product Manger for Camcorders Yoshi Nishimura (the top dog in Sony US Camcorders) why the camcorder's LUX rating was not lower, he said ''It's technically possible to get better low light performance but we would have to craft a much larger lens and we would have to cut down the zoom ratio. We have to balance between size and video quality working to achieve the best overall product. We don't think that 7 LUX or 8 LUX is a bad number for normal customer usage.''

Sony, why'd you have to kill our little video quality revolution? I understand that some people want a small camcorder, but give those people their junky MicroMV camcorders. Give them your tiny MicroMV DCR-IP1s, your DCR-IP55s - but don't give them my large 1/3 in. CCD! Viva la 1/3 in. CCD! There are some of us out there who actually care about video performance, and are willing to take a camcorder that is maybe 20% larger and 20% heavier if the video and low light performance is noticeably improved. Although they have a dominating marketshare in camcorders, I would think Sony would have learned a lesson or two from their competitor Panasonic. The PV-DV953 and the PV-GS70 are extremely popular camcorders in their price ranges - it's nearly impossible to find one in a store. Consumers are smarter than you think. They realize that it is worth sacrificing a little size for video quality. Consumers realize that Bluetooth, laserlink, touchscreens, networking capability and surfing the web on your camcorder are neat features but they are pretty useless. What consumers want is solid video quality and good low light performance, is that really too much to ask for?