GET T ING S TART ED only just been released. Then I started hearing the BBC had a VX-1000 in every single department in the whole of the BBC. Documentaries were filmed with this camera, multi-camera shoots were produced and the professional world with all their big cameras sat back in astonishment as the world of acquisition was redefined, apparently, overnight! DV blew the whole scene apart. The quality of DV, as a recording format, is roughly equivalent to Beta SP. Perhaps on a technical chart DV might score slightly less, but then DV doesn't suffer from the drop-out problem that plagued Beta SP due to shedding and flaking of oxide. DV was just the sort of technology the world wanted desperately. Finally, a low-cost, lossless, high-quality camera/editing solution had arrived. This exact same technology forms the basis of Firewire editing systems today ­ only the deck or camera is usually connected to a computer rather than editing from camera to deck or vice versa. For those using a DV Firewire-based editing system you can work with either a camera or a deck ­ provided the deck/camera has both Firewire `in' and `out'.