Color wheel concept
 

This is just an idea. I want to know how viable it is in theory.

You (a company) take a CCD that is nearly full frame like the type used in the Nikon D70 for instance. You put it in a video camera and instead of filtering each photosite for RGB you instead build a syncronized spinning color wheel split up into those three colors. Then the camera shoots DV25 quality at 72FPS. Essentially three shots, each a different color for what will become one final full color image at 24fps.

I don't know if this would be cost saving at all versus having a 3CCD system. I also don't know if it would actually work. It's just a thought.

It would work, but each of the 3 color images come not at the same time. Stills will be okay, but not motion.

It's been done.

A few years ago - when miniature colour cameras didn't yet exist - I worked with an endoscope (a camera that goes - uh - up people's bottoms) and there was a spinning color wheel sending light down some fibre optics to where there was a single black and white camera. The image was then processed into a full colour image.

Clever eh?

This concept is used quite a lot in DLP beamers in the other way
around. Depending on the concept you can see rainbow colors
when something moves (due to the fact that the wheel isn't
really fast enough) if your eye is good enough. The reverse would
happen when capturing where you would see line twitter or
something that is not supposed to be there. Besides a very fast
color wheel you will also need a high framerate CCD/CMOS chip
(like at least 72 fps, but probably much higher for a good enough
picture).