MY first impressions
 

Just had time for a few quick shots today. Indoors, wide open. Set up my HD200 next to it both with the 17x lens. The HM700 looks like about a stop more brightness when both are in factory 720p setting. Nice! I'll do a more strict test tomorrow, incase the viewfinders are setup differently. Menu access and readability is much improved. The viewfinder is spectacular. The camera is much lighter, although about the same length. Had to adjust position of the tripod plate to almost right over the toe without battery.
Playback and clip/card management is very well handled. Much better than the pano HDX-200 which I found really touchy. The user buttons have handy new functions in this mode.

I'll be trying some low light and noise challenges tomorrow next to the HD200. The issue I had with the 200 was that once noise was provoked, that the compression would make it worse - and if outputting mpg2 again for dvd... The HQ setting I expect will handle this much better. Large areas of uninterrupted dark but not fully black would be passable (maybe grainy) on a monitor, but worse on playback. Mind you, I found ways to work around it with black settings, and overall found other aspects of the 200 picture to be better than the 100 series.

more to come.

Please Sean let us have your settings. I compressed blacks and reduced the noise a little.
M

I'm planning to do some test with a gray scale chart. In the meantime, I don't think compressing the blacks is useful. Noise can be reduced by "crushing" blacks in post in my prior experience - but that isn't always desirable. I suspect gamma settings are more useful. Tim D. is really the person to hound for useful settings, and a clear understanding of which to tweak for what ends. I'll be very happy when he gets something like his DSC settings and superwide out for us to play with - even if in beta form!

Did you get the SxS option or are you recording to SDHC?

SDHC only. I think quality media is critical now, but will become less of an issue. The only factor I see is if collecting footage for another party who requires the m4p workflow.