When the A1 first appeared I noticed folk saying out of the box, the pix was flat and dull, it needed presets. Did that spawn the presets here?

Anyways, recently folk here say, the new PAL pix is fine, looks great no tweaking needed.

I wonder/hope Canon took notice around last March and modified the production runs.

Panasonic did this in response to moans about their GS400. Anyone notice those A1 comments as mine arrived this afternoon and I'm just about to unwrap it.
Cheers.

Depends on if you are doing your own color correction or not.

If you need to hand a tape to someone, I would use the VividRGB setting.

If you are going to edit yourself, you can make a simple adjustment in post while still retaining original color information.

Check this out...

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-XH-A1-Camcorder-Review/Performance.htm

"Canon XH A1’s video performance is excellent. From a consumer standpoint (and let’s face it, this is going to tempt a lot of consumers) the colors appear flat. This is only because most consumer camcorders, even those approaching $2000, tend to oversaturate. This camcorder gives a steady, even-tone in auto mode. This is ideal for professionals, of course, because the XH A1’s extensive color control settings in the Custom Preset menu (see the Other Manual Controls section below) allows you to dial in pretty much any color tone you could want. A relatively flat saturation also gives you more freedom in post-production for color correction."

Ah..thanks Michael.