Difference Between HD and DV

HD vs DV
HD or High Definition is the emerging standard that is beginning to replace older screens that can only show standard definition video. Standard definition screens can only display 480 rows of pixels while HD screens can either have 720 or 1080 rows of pixels. HD can also refer to the format that the recorded video is encoded in since you would need a video source that conforms to the HD standard in order to benefit from it. DV is an acronym for Digital Video. This is the replacement for older analog video recording and storage techniques that were once used to produce the Betamax and VHS videos.

Digital Video was developed with the aim of improving the often problematic analog videos at that time. Analog video like those recorded in Hi8 and Video8 usually exhibit poor video quality which made it unsuitable for any other purpose except home videos. DV allowed professional level video recording in a small an inexpensive camera, which made it an instant favorite for hobbyists and field reporters who want high quality videos.

HD did not do as well as DV at first since it had to solve a lot of problems before it became a marketable product. The problem with HD was that you needed to have everything in HD, from the recording to the TV screen, in order to actually see a difference but both viewers and broadcasters were unwilling to invest their money without instant gratification, that’s why it took quite a while.

The choice of recording in HD or SD is up to the person using the camera if he has a DV camera that supports recording in HD. But if you want to record in HD, you’ve got no choice but to use DV since HD in analog does not exist anymore. Using analog systems to broadcast HD quality video was tried during the early days of HD, but it was soon scrapped in favor of DV due to multiple problems; one of which is the very high bandwidth requirements.

Summary:
1.    HD is a recent standard for TV screens and video media while DV is a type of video storage where the data is stored as digital information
2.    DV was adopted rather easily by the general public while HD underwent a lot of changes before it become viable
3.    Digital video can either be in HD or SD while HD videos are strictly digital videos