Geez...reading these posts makes me all tingly. We should put together a "We are the world.."-type video and send it to Canon.

Count me in for any petitions, letters, support, etc. This is a great idea...and it would benefit a lot of people...AND Canon, I think (brand loyalty-wise).

Maybe Adrian and I can just camp at the front door of Canon Headquarters in Tokyo.

Well I sure don't want to spoil the moment or the intentions but you'd probably do just as well setting the letters on fire and having a candle-light vigil for the cause...in Barrow Alaska.

Product support for most manufacturers comes under regional sales management. That is, it falls under the p&l of each region. You might have best results pressuring major dealers in each region. Let them give yang-yang to the Cannon cuffflinks.

I also learned today that Sony plans to introduce another prosumer model of DV camera (perhaps at NAB). They aren't talking about the model number designation (which is apparently some precious secret) but the product will be positioned somewhere 'rween the PD150 and VX2000. Gee, I bet -Sony- will have some form of owners club support for it. <g>

Ken, thanks for the heads up. Guess John and I will be camping on Canon Japan's doorstep. Don't despair our Europen brothers, we will put in a good word for you guys to.

On the Sony point Ken. I live just round the corner from Sony's Shounan Technology Centre. Maybe I should go on a stealth mission to see what I can find out.

Adrian,

Marketing pressure is the only effective form. As you might gather (from my other posts tonight) I spent several hours with some fine folks from Sony today looking at misc. broadcast gear. The regional g.m. admitted that although Sony has deeply catered to, and practically cornered, the professional broadcast market they had overlooked the independent filmmakers and documentary folks. So suddenly here's this "Soder-guy" using Canon XL1s' to shoot feature films. It was abundantly clear to me that Sony wants DVCam and eventually HDCam to become the defacto standards in that segment of the market. (And, of course, DVCam has a genuinely compelling technical story to tell.)

The impression I was left with was that Sony intends to be extremely aggressive to capture a larger share of the professional and semi-professional "filmmaking" market. If I were Canon I would be both pleased and plussed. "Pleased" because it will inevitably mean more lens sales for Canon (Sony does not make them) which is a reasonably profitable gross margin business. "Plussed" because competing with a Sony in such a body technology war may be futile.

So against this backdrop I'd say that offering a stronger "owners club" support system -worldwide- would be a relatively cheap and effective buyer loyalty tactic for Canon. Sony already offers such a program for its broadcast gear and might conceivably extend it if their intentions to expand remain sincere.

Howdy from Texas,

As usual, Ken's words of wisdom are most wise indeed. Food for thought.

To my UK and Euro brethren, I've already taken steps in proposing to a major Canon dealer over there a working relationship with these message boards. A lobby effort to push for something similar to the Canon USA XL1 Owners Club can easily grow out of that.

Haven't heard back from them yet but I'll keep you advised,

Okay. Sounds great in all... If you need someone who can
speak the native tongue here (if Holland is what you mean)
then you know where to find me.... Lets hope Canon gets
a bit more aggressive with their customers, support and extra
stuff for our cameras!

<dream mode>
harddisk fits in a DV tape that reads/writes the data
from and to the XL1's magnetic head
</dream mode>

sometimes the sunshine gets to my head