Barry:

I agree that Panasonic has set a level, especially with the DVX100A, that Canon, Sony and JVC are going to have real trouble with.

As I former XL1 owner, I was greatly disappointed with the XL1s given the time they had to engineer. The GL2 show a slightly better, but still overall lack of innovation and listening fully to customer concerns.

The PD170 is even more lukewarm than the Xl1s. Other than correcting a couple of PD 150 flaws, Sony appears to have listened little to the marketplace.

That makes the DVX100A all the more amazing - read any intelligent review of the DVX100 and the DVX100A corrects, improves and innovates (especially the new prism and 12-bit dsp) in a year and it's shipping.

Despite all that, a little of XL2 HD hope is still in the back of my head. While shopping for SLRs with motordrive, I probably get EF lenses :)

you never know...

with 12bit processing, they took away the only feature the JVC dvx300? cam had. Glad I bought the inexpensive mx500. I will have enough bucks to get this one (as long as my truck doesn't blow up again).