No
 

No silver and no black mamba for PALSville, according to Mr. Littman; and it doesn't look bright for America either. It's too bad because it's tomorrow's technology today, if you buy now; but you'll have to buy it from Japan. Okay, I'm out of here until Pana/Matsushita shapes up. :-(

Wow, not even PAL?

What other cams have only debuted in Japan and nowhere else?

The MX3000 and MX350 (PAL). Other Panas came as late as 2 years after their Japan debut, but all stripped down and thrice the price. Not nice, that's for sure. :-(

Maybe they have something in the pipe line they would rather try developing for the American point and shoot market? They're claiming development of a 4GB card for next year (?) to go with the sv-av100 (or its successor).

I'm a bit new to these forums but who is Mr. Littman and how reliable is his info? I have been holding off on buying a DV953 hoping that an English GS100 will be available in the spring. If the GS100 is definitely never coming across the pond, I may just take the plunge now.

Chuck Littman is the very theatrical owner of www.supervideo.com, a site which has driven many to distraction. If you do a site search here, you'll find his name mentioned a few times - sometimes with great opprobrium. On the other hand, he has some pretty good credentials re knowing the camera/camcorder industry and has been helpful to a number of people trying to solve problems with camcorders he has recommended or rated highly. I believe I recall reading an earlier post by Chris Hurd in which he mentioned being photographed with Chuck Littman at one of the trade shows, so he is well known and seems to get around a lot.

He gets around because he gets flight tickets for free, thanks to his wife who works for an airline. When you go to the main page of super video, and go down to the bottom, there is a link about Mr. Littman's credentials.

Think about it for a minute. Why wouldn't a manufacturer sell a new product worldwide that "appears" to be a hot item? Why limit it to just one country (unless you want to take it as it is in its foreign language version and run the risk of very expensive repair bills if it goes wrong)?

Is the cost of converting labels/menues/etc into English or some other language too costly? Are there trade barriers? Do they intend for it to be a limited "test-bed" for a better model? Humm, what could the reason be?

Think about it. Why would a manufacturer limit a product that may sell like hot cakes worldwide to just one country? Very interesting indeed. Frank, do you have any thoughts on this?

Nick

I don't know if the GS100 will be come to North A. and PALsville. All I heard was that there was no plans to release the GS100 outside of Japan before Jan. 1, 2004. The MX300/0 was a hot seller. Why didn't Panasonic bring it into North America? I can only guess at Pana's reasoning.I seriously doubt that, but then who really knows besides Pana. The MX300 was a hot seller, but they never brought it in to N.A; the MX2000 and MX2500 was not a hot seller, but yet they did bring them into North America---about a year later. They were also way over-priced compared with what they sold for elsewhere. I see no logic to this. It's just poor marketing, in my opinion.

It's now---what?---the middle of summer in Austrailia? Where's the beef?