Talking about clueless. Someone has to fire those incompetent union workers. =)
here,s the latest hit from Pana-Canada:
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Thank you for your e-mail to Panasonic Canada Inc.

The PVGS400 has not been released in Canada or the USA. As such, we have no idea where this dealer would be getting the product from. At the present time we have no information regarding specs, operation, pricing, release date etc. to provide to you. We would recommend that you contact us in approx. 2 months, at which time we should have more information..

Thank you for your interest in our products.

Regards,

Panasonic Canada Inc.
Customer Care Centre
AH

All the info about the GS400 are coming from PALsville. So Pany Canada's answer sounds logical to me. I'm getting exactly the same answer from NTSC Pany Japan.

Unless somebody can find real new info, can we PLEASE just wait for the official press release from Panasonic Global? It won't be that long anyway. I don't see any relevant gains from repeating the same info again and again and again and again. It's probably a waste of bandwidth as well.

Here's something official as of yesterday; the upcoming Sony 3-CCD with 1.4.7" CCDs with Sharp like grip, and it's gonna be out in July. :-)).

Allan, some USA cam dealers have been taking orders or pre-orders for 2 months now. Crazy, huh? So that blows holes into Pana's sorrowful attempt at song and dance. :-))

I hope at least the specs will be realeased pretty soon, as Sony has announced the replacement of TVR950 the HC1000.

basically.. the same cam as far as I can tell with lower price.
The release is only for Japan for the time being.

there was some reference to DolbyDigital 5.1 ... but couldn't figure out what the hell they were talking about.

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer...000/index.html

looks like this cam will not be competition to GS400 =)
(although it's priced to compete with DV953 model)

but.. wait.. hey.. it's BLACK! ;-)

ps Allan, not all the info is coming from palsville. Most of the info is from there, but there're a lot of signs of PV-GS400.

ps2 GS400 come out in the Pana-SK catalog, but no info, no specs, nor picture. (just the model is mentioned along with GS120 and GS200)

hmm, just personal opinion but i don't like the look o fthe new sony, i think the 950 look way cooler.

The HC1000 is probaly aimed at competing with the low-end Panasonic 3CCD cams. The HC1000 appears to be identical in features to the PDX10 (sans XLR and DVCAM).

Very interesting that the HC1000 has front and rear mics which makes 5.1 easy in post as all you need to do is extact vocals and placem them center and don't forget your LFE channel.

Too bad Sony doesn't have a frame mode or progressive scan!

ha =) thats pretty nice to have 4 chan. sound.

and it records them all on the miniDV? does it say anything about the sound-quality?

if it's competing with GS120... it does not make much sense being proced at DV953 level...

I wonder if this is some kind of inbetween model, like the GS100k, that will be available only in Jap, before a major improvemant... and a world-wide release... any word if it's going to be sold outside Jap?

The HC1000 looks cool to me, perhaps even better than the GS100, IMO.

Even before you tried one, read the specs, and got some feedback? You have more faith that I. :-))

North American Version
 

B&H photo:
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Hi there

Thank You for your interest in our company,
And we appreciate your business,

Model # PVGS400 $1499.00 (out of stock)

Approximate availability in JULY

Sorry as of now we do NOT have any Specifications on the
model mentioned above,

For any additional questions
Please contact our Consumer Video Dept.
By Phone at 800-947-9910 Quick Dial 813,
Or 212-444-5000 - 212-444-6600
Or via Email at consumervideo@bhphotovideo.com