Technically, all this is already available, but spread across different cameras, with aftermarket mods (eg, Hydra, DOF adapters).

Here's a thought:

1. Three half-inch CMOS sensors capable of extreme spatial offset in order to take Hydra, which is built in, not aftermarket.
2. Removable half-inch zoom. It could be essentially the same one that would have been built in as a fixed lens, but modified to be removed.
3. HDMI 1.3a, with full support for higher bit depths.
4. Progressive 1,920 x 1,080, with support for 0-60 frames per second.
5. AVC-Intra, 100 Mbps, 4:2:2, for normal operation, HDMI or Hydra for 4:4:4 uncompressed output.
6. DOF adapter, with stationary advanced plastic screen (a la the new Movietube) and fixed achromatic relay lens, designed especially for the camera.
7. A shoulder-mount-style viewfinder.

Why both a half-inch zoom and a DOF adapter? Well, I'd suggest that you don't always want shallow depth of field.

I find this all fascinating. Candace, I'm curious, what would you do with 0 fps, J/K. It seems like apple will support anybody who gives them an exclusive contract, possibly with a future buyout plan? Lawrence, sorry for my ignorance, what is Hydra? Is there a link to another thread you could give me?

I see both of the specs you guys have posted as pretty specialized towards the indie market. The indie market is pretty small compared all of the other various forms of media production. If Sony or Panasonic could make a decent buck by marketing a cam with a 35mm lens mount, they would, but they can't. The reason why RED could be succesful, in my opinion at least, is not there price point, but the fact that they let Peter Jackson shoot sample footage for NAB. If you can get some major names to use your camera, then people will want to use your camera. I think the ammount of braodcast, theatrical and distributed material shot with the Panavision and Arri digital cine cams will vastly outnumber red, if only becuase DPs, camera ops, and ACs are used to the way these cameras work, and because productions will continue to have the budget to support these cameras. I would hope that the majority of the Red cameras sold will have PL mounts and be equiped with real motion picture glass attachted to them.

Red = modular design ...
 

The beauty of Red is not just the specs of the cam but also, and this is where I think it's appeal really takes off, that it's designed so that modular elements in the camera can be replaced with upgrades. A new chip comes out, replace it rather than the whole camera! This in my opinion is what makes Red viable!

There are just many things why RED is so fascinating.
Unbeatable price point (considering the quality), the support, the upgrades, the 35mm sensor, the modularity, resolution, workflow,...

And RED is a viable camera. I don't want to sound like a fanboy, I don't have the money to buy a RED, but the REDcamera is real, and it's coming.
Peter Jackson didn't shoot his 12 minute short with thin air.

And looking at what the RED team did in 15 months, it's very normal they got a little delayed.

It is a modification to the Panasonic HVX200 (other cameras may be Hydra-ized in the future), done by Reel Stream. A succinct desciption can be found at the beginning of the Hydra thread.

Why not just have high res chips to begin with? Pixel shifting isn't ideal. If you are going to make a camera from scratch, why follow the example of a modded camera.

A few reasons:

1. Through radical spatial offset, Hydra's resolution exceeds (albeit only slightly) 1,920 x 1,080 and may reach or exceed 2K. In effect, the three CCDs become one big virtual sensor, even though, physically, the imaging area is still third-inch and therefore uses the built-in zoom.
2. Although there are small 1,920 x 1,080 chips (the Canon HV20 has one) and a half-inch chip should have more than twice the surface area of a third-inch one, there is still a trade-off between sensitivity and pixel density -- you could opt for greater sensitivity with a half-inch chip, or greater pixel count, or some of each. Maybe with improved technology you could have a lot of each.
3. You probably wouldn't want to increase native resolution but eliminate a design's ability to pixel-shift. I believe that Reel Stream's Juan Pertierra has said that although the JVC HD100 could be modified to deliver 4:4:4 uncompressed data, it couldn't be pixel-shifted beyond its 1,280 x 720 native resolution. Spatial offset, therefore, can be used as a hedge against the future.

Say folks, we have drifted far off topic here... the subject is not RED nor Hydra, but rather the noX. Thanks in advance,

I think that some folks would like to see Nox differentiate itself from its competitors (Red, SI, F23, etc.) and/or step out of their shadow. You have to ask yourself why you would get this camera when some of the cheaper products seem to do the same thing better.

I think Nox is claiming that they will do it, from an cinema filming perspective, better, and I would still like to see exactly what they mean.

Ah yes, it's not about counting pixels, it's about making pixels count. All this talk about RED's advantages has been in the numbers: Price, Resolution, Bit depth, etc. NOX is claiming that the numbers don't matter, it's the pictures that do.

I can't claim to notice a very noticeable difference between d-9 10 bit 4.2.2. and dvc pro 8 bit 4.1.1.

This is not to say that the d-9 wouldn't be more suitable for intense effects or compositing, but bit rate aside, either format, when exposed properly is going to produce a beautiful image.

On a similar note, I have an SACD player and honestly, I have some extremely well recorded cd's that do sound better than some reprints I have on SACD.

Sometimes the numbers do not tell the whole story.

Maybe the numbers don't matter, maybe 8-bit 2k raw does offer a significant workflow advantage over 10bit 4k compressed. I don't know, but I haven't seen any post by a NOX rep that would indicate what they mean by saying: "...it's about making pixels count." And neither have they explained anything about their workflow, other than the fact that they have one. This won't be the be all end all camera, we all can agree with that, but whose to say that there aren't a few skilled DPs out their that wouldn't like to give this thing a run.

If you look at sample images from both cameras, Red to me looks better in particular aspects.

The debayering in Red is significantly better. It doesn't have the weird zippering artifacts that the NoX images show. And the bad thing about the zippering is that any keying or secondary color correction will pick that up.

Noise-wise, the Red footage looks cleaner.

Red of course has more resolution. Nox does looks sharper, while the Red looks blurry at 4K. When you downsample I think this difference goes away.

Otherwise, the images look similar to me (aesthetically).

2- But to get back on topic... I think people would like to know what differentiates Nox from its competitors? (You don't have to mention particular competitors.) This question wasn't quite answered, other perhaps than to say that the footage is easy to grade (but it looks like one of the competitor's products is even easier, so...).

Good points Glenn. The demosaicing is indeed less than perfect, and coupled with lack of the necessary optical low pass filter produces a range of artifacts that just don't look good. I'd be very keen to see some NOX images with an OLPF, or as raw so that I can demosaic them myself.

Graeme