When is it time to invest in a high-def editing setup?

Question

I own a ten year old digital editing appliance that I'm considering replacing with Final Cut Pro. I want to start work on some niche documentaries that I plan to sell online. I made one documentary at home about six years ago that I still sell online.
I've never bought a HD TV because I don't watch broadcast television. I find conventional DVDs on high-def screens very grainy in image quality ... downright unwatchable ... so to this day I still watch all my DVDs (homemade and store-bought) on a big tube television set.
Personally, I don't want a high-def TV for watching old movies and 70's TV shows on DVD. I'm perfectly happy with my tube TV, my 2001-era editor, and my twelve year old standard-definition Sony PD150 cancorder which I just had serviced and cleaned.
Heck, 20% of my viewing pleasure still comes from videocassettes, which I can get at the Goodwill for 25 cents a piece.
But ... now... I have some ideas for some new niche video products. Only problem is ... I haven't followed the conversation about high-def at all. I'm wholly and utterly ignorant. Pretty much all I know is that BluRay won the format war … and I know I can look up 720p, 1080p, 1080i should that information become important.
That's the extent of my knowledge. I honestly have no idea whether my Sony PD-150, my old editor, and single-layer DVDs would be just fine ... or whether they would result in a bunch of refund requests when I start selling these new DVDs I want to make.
God help me. I just don't keep up with what other people are doing.
And googling "do-I-need-to-dump-my-90's-era-digital-camcorder-and-standard-definition-editing- appliance-in-favor-of-ten-thousand-dollars-worth-of-new-high-def-cam-and-editing -gear-if-I'm-going-to-make-another-sellable-DVD" didn't really yield much.
Can anyone help me here?
1) Is anyone in the lower-mid-range video business … like a budget wedding guy or a niche how-to video … still using standard-def stuff to churn out acceptable product in high volume?
I've sold hundreds of copies of my DVD online and two weeks ago I got my first ever refund request … the guy berated me for selling a DVD in standard definition when (he said) the "commercial standard" now is high-def. No one else has ever complained. So now I'm left wondering if this guy is the first of a new generation of customers who would not tolerate a standard-def product … or if he's just a dork who needed to complain about something.
2) How does manufacturing a high number of copies of a high-def video work? My 50-minute standard-def movie fit wonderfully on an inexpensive 4.7GB DVD. Running off copies was cheap and painless. I understand that high-def discs are some 25GB. Are you guys with your new Mac and Final Cut Pro working with HD buying these expensive discs for large volume runs? Are even decent bread-and-butter wedding shoots or corporate training films these days getting burned to BluRays?
3) Does it make sense to trade in a perfectly good 90's high-end standard definition digital cam for a new HD cam when I'm still going to burn it to a conventional DVD?
4) Is my gear still perfectly acceptable for budget projects? I really don't want to pay for Final Cut Pro and a HD burner ... I would only get one if my old editor is flat-out obsolete, which it certainly isn't for editing home movies.
Note: "Budget" does not mean poorhouse. I'm talking about "working" niche videos … competent (non-broadcast) megachurch sermon DVDs … homemade documentaries … non-Rolls-Royce weddings … small business promo videos ...
… the stuff that working joe videos are made of.
What constitutes "reasonable and acceptable" these days, when just about everybody has a high-def TV set they're watching these things on?

Answer 1

When I made the move from SD it was painful. It was just before the digital broadcast change over and when I hooked up my new Samsung 37" HD TV to my cable box I almost hurled.
since then, almost all of the broadcasters have caught up with HD transmission and almost all broadcast stuff in 1080i or 720p look amazing.
Standard Def DVDs are another story. Well done commercial SD DVDs can look quite nice when playing back through my new Samsung Blu-ray player. The folks who compress down to SD for the big studios are indeed rocket scientists and they're doing things that most of us simply can't afford to do.
Plus, the scaling technology in players and TVs has come a long way as well. So Don't throw out your standard DVDs just yet.
Should you consider a Hi Def camera? I'd say Yes, The time has come. If all you were doing was posting 480P online I'd say use your camera til it croaks. but the optical delivery is a factor for you.
Authoring your own BD for mass duplication? That's a little more complicated still. There are licensing issues involved in Blu-ray authoring which are complex. It's one of the reasons that we probably won't see Blu-ray hardware in Macs for a while. I don't think you can duplicate as easily as you can with DVD. You can burn your own one at a time if that's a possibility for you.
Shooting HD and delivering SD DVDs? It can be done. But compressing so that you end up with a satisfactory product is sort of a black art. You'll see lot's of discussions online about how many people are disappointed with HD to DVD, some claiming that their SD to DVD projects actually look better.
My latest technique for getting respectable DVDs is to first downrez in Mpeg Streamclip to an anamorphic SD file still in the Prores codec. Then I use Bitvice to do the mpeg2 file.
The bottom Line.
If you can afford it, get a new camera, BD burner and learn how to author BD. The authoring software is not fully baked yet for mac users but you should definitely head in that direction ASAP. You can even incorporate SD footage in an HD timeline and the SD footage is much more palatable than SD DVD.
On the up-side, you might be happy to know that you missed the worst of it. Be thankful that you were able to put it off so long. There are many other people out there who rode the bleeding edge and suffered a great deal of economic and emotional trauma.
good Luck!
g