Yeah! It's not just Canon, though. ALL the video camera manufacturers look silly and shameful. They wasted the last 10-15 years and billions of R&D on technology that doesn't have aliasing artifacts and other problems. Then here comes the 5D2 with an innovative new design that no one ever thought of before: line skipping! This amazing technology skips 2 out of 3 lines on the sensor to get the readout speed up high enough for 30 FPS.

Of course, maybe it's possible that the video camera manufacturers had considered this option before (though I doubt it because it's obviously such a novel idea), and maybe they chose to avoid that design because of the inevitable aliasing artifacts and other terrible image problems that it causes.

Those poor duffers must have thought that some of their customers actually cared about quality! The egg is on their face now, because the wide use of the 5D2 clearly proves that no one cares about aliasing artifacts. They could have given up all their efforts years ago and no one would have known the difference.

Hopefully they've learned their lesson and they will start pumping out more cheap cameras with line skipping and junky artifacts like the 5D2. They rake in the money and customers get the artifacts they so desire. Everybody wins.

Or maybe they will stick to their old-fashioned and outmoded ideas about "quality". If so, they will probably have to spend a lot of time and R&D on a design that doesn't use line skipping, or at least a custom OLPF. (Pfft. Luddites.)

Less than a year. So I really don't understand your point of view. How often should the product rev happen? Every month? Once a week? I don't get it.

The point is canon photo has been knowingly developing this camera.. while canon video just releases a lame "s" update (probably over a year ago) to their now 3+ year old hd technology.

What Canon video should do is make a 5DM2-Like video (primary) camera with a kit zoom lens with an eos mount using the 5D's sensor, flip out screen (widescreen format). etc..

Nobody who has actually used the newer S/A models considers them "lame."

See http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xl-...e-upgrade.html for example.

And who is to say that Canon isn't working on the concept that you're proposing? We have
a fairly speculative ongoing discussion on that exact topic right here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/area-51/2...l-h2-when.html
-- although the biggest challenge to that particular idea is going to be the lens, as we've
already outlined in that thread.

Three years is the short-end average for any given pro-series camcorder model, by the
way... although some go on much longer, such as the Panasonic DVX100 and Canon GL2.

yes and the XL2.. all great cameras in their day. And yes the XLH1s is a worthy upgrade.. but still just complementing it to the XHA1 when it came out with some of its unique features.. don't get me wrong, after all I am a Canon guy.