What's the difference between a "CCD" and a "CMOS" chip?
If you've bought a camcorder recently, you've either bought a camcorder which has what's called a CCD, or what's called a CMOS. Both of those are different types of image sensors where the information is electronically converted to either zeroes and ones or electronic impulses that can be recorded and taped to frequencies. There's advantages and disadvantages of both. The older technology is the CMOS – is the CCD, I mean. It's a very tried and true format. It's something we've used for years. It's going to continue, probably, in cameras for a long time. The newer technology is now called CMOS – and that's something that's come over from the still cameras. CCDs can be used on expensive cameras, and so can CMOS. The most expensive cameras in the world these days are CMOS cameras – and they're single chips. CCDs can tend to be a single chip or three-chip. So, it's really a matter of which technology you want. Now, let's talk about a little bit of the advantages. The advantages of CMOS is, in some ways, we can produce the image of a three-CCD camera off of a one-chip camera. So, it's less expensive for us to produce, but they don't compromise picture quality. CMOS is really a great piece of technology and you're going to find that more and more prevalent in camcorders as we go from here on. What's the big advantage to CCDs? Well, CCDs is a technology that we've known for years. We can produce them relatively inexpensively and we've been able to reduce their size over the years and still maintain their performance. So, CCDs, I think, especially in lower-end cameras are going to be around for a while. It doesn't mean they're bad – it just means they're older technology – but it tried and true technology. And, I wouldn't necessarily shy away from a CCD camera if the performance is there.
