I find it hard to believe that it was THAT hard to shoot in HD back in 2003. "Attack Of The Clones," Michael Mann's "Collateral," and several Robert Rodriguez films were shot in HD a few years before or at the same time Empire of Dreams was released. The tech already existed, and was being used by some pretty hefty filmmakers at the time. I hardly think Rodriguez would've been shooting HD if the technology and hardware were so cumbersome. He's all about streamlining the process, and was talking about the ease of shooting and producing films in HD back in 2003. And TV shows looking to cut costs (such as Star Trek: Enterprise) were beginning to shoot in HD at this same point in time. Maybe for the regular consumer, it was not possible, but for professional production studios and filmmakers, it was clearly possible very early on in the last decade.

-NJM