[sdiy] Relative merits of various BBD's

[anthony]

I was wondering  if there's been a comparison or if there's a consensus on 
how all (or most) of the various BBD devices stack up to one another.

I'm talking about:
S/NR
Insertion loss
noise
maximum clock speed
few stages versus many stages (this covers a lot)
ubiquity
power supply

I'm sure there's other important criteria that I'm leaving out.

It would be most useful to favor BBD's we're most likely to encounter since 
almost none of them are even in production anymore.

Panasonic seems to have been way into the BBD thing since there are so many 
MN3XXX devices I can't keep track of them. And there's no logical 
correspondance in the #'s. Compare: MN3005, MN3006 and MN3007. Oh and the 
MN3008 - that's a funky looking sucker.

Is there a hands down winner already? Reticon? Philips? (I think Philips 
made some...)  Panasonic?

Should Panasonic win simply because they made so many?

{B^P