I really haven't dipped into the HD market yet, but my buddy who has a few HVX200's was telling me it doesn't shoot in true 1080. Is this true, if so do the newer Panasonic cameras such as the 170 shoot true 1080?

What do you mean by "true 1080"? You mean the sensor is 1920 x 1080 pixels? Or you mean it is 1080 Progressive scan?

I really haven't dipped into the HD market yet, but my buddy who has a few HVX200's was telling me it doesn't shoot in true 1080. Is this true, if so do the newer Panasonic cameras such as the 170 shoot true 1080?

They are not true 1080p chips. But they output 1080p video. Panasonic uses uprezzing to get a 1080p image.

Is this true, if so do the newer Panasonic cameras such as the 170 shoot true 1080?
Simple anwer is "no", but it begs the question of what "true 1080" actually means.

If 1920x1080 resolution is the answer, then "no", in the sub-$10,000 market, the EX cameras are the only ones that can truly claim to do that.

The 200/170 sensors are 960x540, but pixel shifting increases the luminance resolution by 1.5x overall (1.2x in each axis), so actual resolution equates to about 1200x650,obviously pretty close to 1280x720. They will produce 1080 system recordings, but the resolution obviously can't be any better than the system produces.

One interesting point is the difference between the 170 and Panasonics 151 (same chip, but uses AVCHD compression and on to SDHC memory. In 720 mode, the 171 uses DVCProHD, which subsamples horizontally from 1280 to 960. Hence users see an improvement by recording in 1080 - nothing to do with the vertical structure, but just to get 1280 horizontally.

With the 151 and AVCHD, 720 recordings are full raster 1280x720, so there is much less point to go to 1080 - the codec captures all the front end is capable of in 720 mode.