Videomaker Best of the Year award
 

I just got my latest Videomaker magazine and It's the Best of the Year edition. Videomaker picked Sony FX7 as Best Prosumer camcorder of the year. This is crazy that Sony FX7 beat out Canon XH-A1. The Panasonic HVX200 won Breakthrough camcorder of the Year. Also Canon HV10 won Best HD consumer camcorder of the year. What do you all think about the award that was handed out by Videomaker magazine?

If I had to take a guess as to why Videomaker made their decisions:

1. The XH A1 wasn't released in time for consideration.

2. Magazines often need to hand out rewards to different companies (be fair) to keep their advertising dollar. Yes, the editorial content of magazines is often dictated by outside companies. That's why really negative (pointing out all the flaws) equipment reviews aren't seen very often.

I would probably side more with #1 because if I recall correctly, the HVX was released in late December 2005. And it won a 2006 award...even though it was technically a 2005 camera. Why? Magazines are about 2 months behind in writing articles (this is the nature of the print business) and therefore anything released late October-December will not be able to make it.


That's also why there haven't been any print magazine reviews of the XH A1 yet. Time to test the camera + 2 months means we'll probably see reviews in February. And by that token, the A1 will probably receive awards as a 2007 camera.

But didn't the Canon XH-A1 come out about the same time as the Sony FX7?

What difference does it make what some magazine says... how can that possibly impact how you're using the camera? I'm closing this thread but leaving it in public view, as an example of the type of discussion that I don't want to have on this site... forget about such meaningless superlatives as "camcorder of the year," what utter nonsense... all that counts is what are *you* doing with this camera? What are you creating with it and how are you using it. That's what this message board is for.

Keep the "my thing is bigger than your thing" mentality off of this site, please. Thanks in advance,