On the contrary, I'd say that Sony does own most of the market for affordable HD videography, and there's still nothing to compete with the FX1 at that price over a year after it started shipping. The Z1U is a little harder choice at ~$4500, but you can still get two of them for the cost of one XL-H1 or an HVX200 with some recording storage. The HD100U has a unique niche as a shoulder-mounted HD camera, but I don't get the impression JVC is selling more than a small number of those compared to sales of the Sony cameras.

Personally I've pretty happy with what Sony gave us and continue to be impressed that a $3000 video camera can deliver 700 lines of recorded resolution. Their current models struggle in poor lighting, but a simple 15-30W on-camera light solves that problem for most of my purposes. These are good times for videographers in terms of equipment options.

Not really. That argument would hold if there had been real alternatives when the Z1 was released. Sure, no one put a gun to Jim's head (at least in this case -- I don't know what he does in his off hours), but the JVC HD1 and HD10 are single-chip and virtually useless for 24-fps applications (you can't just drop the "extra" 6 frames). It was more a vote for low-cost HD (which at the time meant HDV and coincidentally 1080i) over high-end HD or SD. Had the HD100 or HVX been available when the Z1 was released, I'm sure the Z1 wouldn't have enjoyed the sales volume that it has.