"Phil Weldon" wrote...
Would you have the rec.video.desktop newsgroup exclude
discussion of digital cameras?

Discussion of cameras used for production would more
properly go in rec.video.production. Cameras as used
for capture/record devices in NLE systems would seem
to be appropriate for r.v.d But that would be apparent to
anyone who hung around either newsgroup for more than
a couple of days. But, in reality the two newsgroups are
so similar that discussions frequently slop over into the
other newsgroup and many of us read them interchangably.

How about DGI?

Do you mean the Direccion General de Inteligencia, the
Cuban secret police? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DGI
Cuba uses NTSC (which I found surprising, I would have
assumed SECAM as the rest of the Communist Bloc)

Keep in mind that with a digital train, NTSC or PAL NEVER
exist except for possible display on an analog NTSC or PAL
monitor.

I guess that depends on how you define "NTSC" and "PAL".
Most people define it as the dimension of the frame in pixels,
and the frame rate (and the interlaced fields). You can be sure
that people who try to mix NTSC and PAL very quickly discover
that they are quite real, whether in analog or in digital form.

Except for the handful of people on the bleeding edge who have
HDV, etc. camcorders, every other camera represented here is
either NTSC or PAL. Regardless of whether it is analog or digital.
It has been that way since first NTSC (and then PAL) camera
and continues to this day, unabated.

NTSC and PAL are not even processed the same in digital
form. For example, in DV (the most widely-used digital video
codec), NTSC is sampled 4:1:1 (Y,U,V) while PAL is
sampled 4:2:0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4:2:0

And the monitors used for the kind of editing discussed in the
newsgroup are NEVER NTSC or PAL.

Actually, people who are motivated to do quality video editing
never use computer monitors for qualitative evaluation of TV
pictures. You just cannot display a proper television picture on
a computer monitor. Mainly because of the very great difference
in gamma transfer curve, and also because of differences in
colorimetry. A good television monitor likely costs more than
your whole computer system (or maybe 2x or 3x more).

And NTSC, PAL, SECAM, and variants are being marginalized
with the advent of High Definition TV.

If you post that again in ~5 years, you might be right.