I'll be glad when all the info comes out,,,I'm tired of waiting. I need to see what this whole thing will cost so if it's to high I can make a choice on something else.

<< The thing is, tape is cheap >>

But remember this cam is first and foremost an HD cam... and DVCPro HD tapes are *not* cheap, in fact they're actually fairly pricey. If you're shooting a big project, that cost adds up in a big hurry.

True, DVCPro stock is still priced fairly high, but I would not feel safe
putting any of my precious footage on anything less than a mirrored
RAID or backed up on two hard drives. I have had two LaCie drives go down and
one of my colleagues had one die too. Others have reported drives dying
early in their life expectancy as well. Let's face it, cheap drives are cheaply made.

DVD-ROM has not proven very reliable in my
experience. I, and recently others, have burned DVD backups and had
them "verified okay", yet upon trying to open a folder I got a
"failed: corrupted" error message. The disk was in perfect shape.

Last time I checked, P2 and compact flash were still pretty expensive per gig,
so I don't see that as a long term storage solution . . . yet.

data stream
 

If it's going to be some sort of 50 mb/sec DVCPro HD, then why not go IMX?

My next camera is going to be an XDCAM, which can shoot DVCAM and IMX, which is a high-quality 50 mb/sec format that looks just like DigiBeta.

For me, it's the logical equipment upgrade as it is still downcompatable shooting DVCAM alongside my DSR390, plus I have IMX available, which looks amazing on a 2/3" chip camera. IMHO, any SD 2/3" chip camera will beat any 1/3" chip camera regardless of whether it's HD or not, due to such factors as low-light sensitivity, depth of field sensitivity, etc. All of these are affected by chip side.

Also, Sony already said that the blue-violet laser currently used in XDCAM's is already capable of handling an HD data stream.

Re: data stream
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : If it's going to be some sort of 50 mb/sec DVCPro HD, then why not go IMX? -->>>

It's not 50-Mbps DVCPro HD -- it's 100 Mbps.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : IMHO, any SD 2/3" chip camera will beat any 1/3" chip camera regardless of whether it's HD or not, due to such factors as low-light sensitivity, depth of field sensitivity, etc. All of these are affected by chip side.
-->>>

Although the P2 DVCPro HD camera probably will have 1/3" chips, its CCD size hasn't been officially divulged yet.

IMX is a good idea. Being that the FX1 is the consumer version and the Z1 is a "prosumer" product, not a broadcast product, several of us have speculated that Sony's next step will be a low-cost IMX system with HD resolution. There have also been rumors about leaks in that direction. You see, even though the physical form factor is so very different, IMX and HDV are both MPEG2-based and closely related. If Sony wanted to have 1080i HD IMX product on the market today, they could have it on shelves next morning, so to speak. All the R&D is done. But it is very unlikey that such a camera would cost less than US$10k.