Perhaps trade secrets or quality assurance?

Nowdays there is an abundance of very high-quality semiconductor reverse engineering services. They are cheap too. I don't think trade secret could last more than a day after the device has been released to the broad market.
As for quality assurance, there are standard procedures any good foundry follows to. I don't see how Canon can be better than a semiconductor-dedicated company for which chips are bread and butter.

It's a shame Canon never got into the CCD business, and it's way too late now. I think for them CMOS production is a way to make up for missing the boat in the CCD manufacturing market.

Charles McConathy
 

Hello DVINFO'ers,

I am sorry to bring sad news.
Charles McConathy, the owner of Promax, is sick with cancer.

If you ever went to a trade show where Promax exhibited, you
would have seen a smiling grey haired gentleman out on the floor
talking with the customers with a twinkle in his eye.

Charles is the best of the good guys on the net. He has spent countless
hours online responding to complex questions with good answers.

Charles was the hard drive guru when scsi was voodoo.
He steered many of us into solutions
that actually worked, instead of higher price alternatives that didn't.
Promax has always been one of my favorite vendors, because I could
trust them to do what they said they would do.
The reason Promax flourished is because of his hard work, ethics
and continuing generosity to the entire video community.

I sincerely send Charles and his family my very best wishes in this
extraordinarily difficult time.

Jacques

PS you can send your get well wishes to: mcconathy@promax.com

Very, very sad to hear about this. I appreciate the notice, Jaques.

New Sony DVD cam coming soon
 

I just heard from Sony's main competition that Sony will be releasing a new DVD cam shortly. That's all I know. Thanks. :)

Hmmm, wonder if it is there new HDV camera...guess we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks Jaques,
Charles reputation as one of the good guys has been long established in my shop. In fact, I worked with him to build the first "affordable" Mac NLEs in our world. We're going back to the blazing Quadra 840AV and Radius card, Premiere 1.0 I think. He's earned enough enough goodwill to help him through this I'm sure

Question. What's the best, least expensive way to generate excitement for a new camcorder release?

Answer. Start a rumor of a new camcorder release and let the amateur or prosumer community speculate like wild !

Let's face it, the real surprise will be if it is actually something really new, really good, and at a really competitive price. Thanks for the heads-up Frank, but ......

Cheers, Nick

Nick, are you talking about the pocket sized CineAlta?

Well, just keep in mind that there was a time when people were calling the JVC HD Cam total Vaporware...and now look, a lot of people had to eat big crap sandwiches. Also, one also needs to remember that Sony has already announced plans for a HD camcorder, so my speculation isn't that spacey. If one doesn't like speculation threads, one should stay away from them.

I'll see if I can get more information now. I'll have to e-mail someone who works---, and get back.

Chill out Boys. Some folks can spread third-or-fourth-party rumors and some folks can comment on them. That's one of the things I like about this country.

Thanks Frank for taking the time to follow-up. Who knows, there may be exciting news after all.

Nick :)

New Sony Cam has 24p
 

A fella over at DV.com pointed this interesting information out. The new optical cameras from Sony have 24p.

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/webapp/SubCategory?m=0&p=2&sp=20132&sm=0&s=&cpos=

Yeah, but did you read the last line, it's an optional card that will no doubt add a little more on the the US$19 000 and $34 000 price tags