Skaters aren’t always ready to give up old ways so easily, but most of us have finally accepted the transition into the high definition world. It’s been a long and slow journey, so we decided to put together this timeline of how skateboarding started to ditch the VX1000 and pick up HD camcorders in its place.

For years, the gold standard of skate cameras was the VX1000. Even though it’s nearly 30 years old, skaters still search far and wide and often break the bank for this grail camera. Over the past few years, though, other main characters have appeared, most notably the Panasonic HPX-170.

Armed with its own set of desirable features and a more reliable storage format, the HPX (and its older brother, the HVX) have quickly become the weapon of choice for some of skating’s most influential filmmakers. We hit up some of the HPX’s most notable proponents to walk us through the history and offer some detailed insight into what exactly has made it so desirable and ubiquitous.

In 2022 the HPX is now starting to face some of its own limitations as well, so we also looked into the future to see what could potentially take its place down the line as video technology and technical know-how amongst skate videographers continue to grow hand-in-hand.

Video by: Alex Coles
Produced by: Alexis Castro
Written by: Alex Coles, Alexis Castro, Ian Michna
Archival Support: Ben Jones
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