The HDV format

JVC and Sony introduced low cost HDV camcorders during 2004 that record 1080i or 720p on mini-DV tape. HDV uses inter frame compression across multiple frames rather than within a single frame to record 1080 by 50i, 1080 by 60i or 720 by 30p at or below the 25 Mbps data rate of the DV format. HDV stores less than one fifth of the information on DVCPROHD. To accomplish this feat, HDV relies on MPEG-2 compression.