Canon HG10 was finally released.
 

Looks like the camera is now in stores. Amazon has it for under a thousand.

Is it different from HV20's LCD screen?
A-ha! They confessed at last. Why did not they advertise built-in ND filter on the HV20?
Is it known already whether fields are properly flagged for 3:2 cadence or not?
So no histogram for video mode?
Seems like a pseudo-feature. Judging by Canon's QuickStart demo, it seems that regular start takes 7-8 seconds, too long imho. Realizing that this is a serious problem, Canon created QuickStart. They rather shoudl have installed a fast write-through buffer. Let's calculate: 15Mbps ~ 2MBps. Multiplying by 8 seconds, resulting in measly 32MB. Is this too much to ask? Instead they saved on memory, but added this stupid QuickStart mode and another button. Watch demo on Canon website. It seems that to start recording you need to press QuickStart button if the camcorder was in sleep mode, and regular Power button if it was properly turned off. Now one has to remember was it turned off or put to sleep. Poor design.
Definite improvement in documentation. Expectations of customers' IQ is definetely rizing steadily in the last couple of years. Compare to the HV20 docs: "Portrait: the camcorder uses a large aperture, achieving a focus on the subject while blurring other distracting details. Sports: Use this mode to record sports scenes such as tennis or golf." Now compare to the Elura 80/85/90 docs: "Portrait: Use this mode to give accent to your subject by blurring background or foreground. Sports: Use this mode to record sport scenes (such as tennis or golf) or moving objects (such as roller coasters)." The next step would be to limit the description of, say, Portrait mode to simply "ensures shallow depth of field", and to explain notions of DOF and shutter speed in a separate how-does-it-work chapter and bingo! you will get a proper user's manual from 1970-ies.
I wonder does it include VideoStudio 11, VideoStudio 11 Plus, MovieFactory 6 or MovieFactory 6 Plus. Not that big a deal, but anyway, they should have been more specific.
Catching up with Panasonic? Good news nevertheless, it is always hard to understand for newbies why Firewire for video and USB for audio.
Does this mean no overscan? Or 3% overscan? My TV has 2%-5% overscan depending on the mode, and my Canon camcorder has larger overscan than my TV, this really hurts in tight shot situations.
This may be a good mic, but attached to HG10 the whole thing does not look nice. Why the mic is fully black, while Canon continues making silver-painted camcorders?

Yes it is different from the HV20's LCD screen. It's identical to the HG10's LCD screen.

It should come as no surprise whatsoever that 24p on this camcorder is identical to 24p on the HV10, HV20 and HG10 (that is, embedded in a 60i stream without flags).

Because of the make-believe 'display' that you could call up on replay of the tape. If a frame was flagged as having been shot at 1/60th @ f/8 this aperture readout was only ever an extrapolation of the amount of internal ND used, and not the actual aperture. Better to keep customers in the dark (Ha!) than to tell them the whole film was shot at f/4. Panasonic, Sony, JVC - they're all the same BTW.

Of course the portrait and sports modes are the same thing - high shutter speeds to keep the iris wide and dof shallow. Landscape mode really needs small apertures for great dof, but I'm betting the Canon won't allow this as diffraction is so visible at apertures smaller than f/5.6.

Overscan is a real problem. More and more modern TVs don't overscan at all, so Canon's choice of words is just confusing. It's about time all camcorder v/finders were full frame displays like Sony's new EX, and be done with it.

tom.

I was unaware that the HV10 had 24p.

Indeed it does not -- my mistake (as usual).

And as near as I can figure the HG10 utilizing a rolling shutter, not a global shutter.

I understand the differences, but what anomalies might be expected.

Editing
 

Got my HG10 yesterday. So far, I've only tried 1080i.
I attempted to use the Canon-supplied Ulead software to edit files brought in from the camera, but it promptly crashed.
iMovie 08 was fine.
The surprise was Vegas on Windows, which opened the MTS file fine and let me do some editing. This is the trial version of Vegas Pro 8.0 Build 144 running on Windows Vista 64-bit. I was not expecting this to work, as I had read elsewhere on these forums that Vegas was only supporting Sony AVCHD cameras. However, as I state above, this is with 30fps 1080i, perhaps it will not work with the 24p frame rate from the camera, which I have not yet tested.

Just a warning David....you know were gonna bug you for some footage...right???? :-)

Ian - yes, but seems like everyone here just cares about 24p and since this is my "home movie" cam, I really don't that much - that's what my XH-A1 is for :)
Happy to post some stuff though and might get to it over the weekend!

I download an AVCHD file, and pulled it into Vegas 8, and it was editable, though in playing on preview, it was definitely jerky. I then rendered it to a Cineform .avi codec, and playback of that rendered file was perfect, and looked fantastic.

Vegas 8 specs indicate it does support Sony AVHCD.

In another thread, I have learned that you can use Cineform NeoHDV to convert the file to .avi and do pull down down of 24p footage. It does take some working with getting the right codec lined up, but the result according to Les Dit are perfect.

Is the "microphone/headphone terminal" standard 3.5mm jacks, or something proprietary?

Standard 3.5mm. The headphone jack is shared with the AV jack. The microphone jack is under the lens.