Rude? Yes. Short-sighted? Maybe... Only Spec-Comm knows why it has taken this long, and who is really to say (other than them) whether or not these delays are a real issue or not. It's doubtful that they want to drag such a product development cycle out forever, but at the same time they really can't ship it until it's a viable product. Simply adding new people to the design team doesn't always fix things, it can often cause more problems.. Been there, done that. Given David's interaction with these forums here and over at dvxuser.com, I'm confident that they will deliver a working product, when it's ready. The only real negative side to all of this is that in the meantime, they have been losing sales to other devices like FireStore. The HVX200 is practically a year old now and market dynamics have evolved somewhat... I'm interested in the CinePorter still, but less so than I was 6 or 8 months ago. My workflow is established and rather efficeint without it, so I don't know if I would actually buy it now. The other factor playing into those thoughts at this point is I'm probably going to be unloading my HVX200 next spring. It has served me well, but I'm ready to move up and own a bigger camera system with better lens options, larger CCD block, etc.. No guarantees that I'll buy Panasonic and end up with a P2 based product that will potentially make use of CinePorter -- I have a few options in mind, but will save that for another thread. Anyway, if they don't have CinePorter shipping by NAB, then they'll be missing the boat to some extent... Or at least that's how I see it.

Yeah, those attorneys and their backwards ways... ;) It's just about convenience and compatibility. It's hard to walk into a government court house and ask that they roll an A/V cart into a court room or conference room and expect there to be a DVD player on it. I occasionally do legal documentation work and I'm starting to get requests for DVD copies, but even then, they still want a VHS tape too. The DVD is just an added bonus and I typically make one anyway unless the client specifically asks me not to.

OTOH, I've been doing some work for insurance agencies and they swing the other way a bit. DVDs are great for many of them and they love PC/Mac compatible slide-shows with HTML, XML and/or excel spreadsheet files along with it in the data portion of the disc. If only we could get a dominant HD delivery format with affordable players, I could sell them on HD in a heartbeat.

Denis,

You can view that information when you play back the clip in the VF on the camera. I don't know which of the NLEs is capable of doing the same. With the CinePorter You can view up to 8GB at a time in the camera.

Hope this helps,

David