<<<-- Originally posted by Bill Ravens : It's astonishing to me how much variability there is in the human subjective opinion. Here's a link to a direct comparison between the DVX100A and the XL2. To my eye, the XL2 looks sharper and cleaner...

http://www.hyphencreative.com/video/xl2_vs_dvx100a_24p.wmv

It just shows ta go ya. I also prefer Mobil1 over Pennzoil. -->>>

This is more than mere human subjective opinion. There's no doubt that the XL2 looks sharper and cleaner next to the DVX100, but even in the link you provided chromatic aberation is present if you know where to look.

For instance: At the 14 second mark there is a clock tower on top of the building. If you look along the top edge of the building, contrasting the sky, you can easily see CA present.

Paul...

I went to the 14 second mark, as you suggested, and examined the image at full resolution of my monitor (1280x1024). What I see there, and it's hardly even distinguishable at this resolution, is some aberration that looks to me like mosquito noise from the compression process. The reason I think it's mosquito noise is because all the fringing exists directly near a hot spot from the sun off of the tower dome. This is typical compression artifacts due to the high contrast ratio. I then backed up the video sequence to examine the DVX100 image at the same resolution. I see the same anomalies in that image. In fact, to my eye, the color banding looks noticeably worse. As I said, beauy is in the eye of the beholder...blah...blah..blah.

You may want to consider degaussing your monitor. if you're seeing color fringes there, they certainly don't show up on my monitor.

Yeah well the xl2 is soo big, i wouldnt be able to film skateboarding with that. The dvx is perfect for me. Some people flip out about how big the DVX is when filming skateboarding because their vx1's and vx2's are all small.

Well, I was almost going to consider the XL2 a contender again if somehow the FX1 failed to be short of anything like Sony CineAlta quality... but it seems like there are issues? Wha?

That's okay.

Canon is bound to put out an XL2S - except it will be called the "XL2.5" because the new version will have a whopping 2.5" flip out LCD instead of current 2"- that is how they come up with their product number, no? The size of the flip out LCD?

Oh, and it will have 2 more XLR's as well for a grand total of 6. These 2 new ones will allow for mpeg-1 lossy audio capture.

Bartender, another double.

I have to agree with bill here, I see fringing, but not purple. Looks
like compression in either the DV or the WMV in my opinion as well.

Paul: I did not say the image would look *better* than the FX1,
since that is all in the eye of the beholder. Also, a lot can be
done to tweak an image prior to hitting a DVD, but that's beside
the point.

I only said that I think the resolution/sharpness will be the
same with the XL2 and the FX1 when downsampled to DVD
(for the FX1). I'm saying nothing about picture quality....

Rob,

Understand now. Thanks.