The MSRP of the Z1 is indeed $5946. The MSRP of the FX1 is $3700. So, on the surface, that's a $2246 difference. Which is an awful lot.

Street price remains to be seen -- apparently the $4900 that's been tossed around may actually be the "minimum advertised price", and may be a good reflection of street price, depending on demand. If there's incredible demand, the price will be more around MSRP, if there's more supply than demand, the price may move more towards the MAP.

It all remains to be seen when the camera is released. Interestingly the XL2 stayed stuck at full MSRP at B&H for months, whereas the FX1 has already come down from MSRP after only a few weeks, so perhaps the pent-up/overwhelming demand situation won't keep the Z1 price too high for too long. But we shall see.

Don't forget the Z1 has nice audio controls (no two track recording, to boot) and black and cinegama controls. But $2300 more?!

heath

OK, sorry to jump in here as I've been away from the forums for a little while, but how has the demo footage been lately with this new Sony? I have yet to see any fast moving footage from the camera, but I am keen to see some, so see how the MPG2 holds up undermovement at the DV bandwidth.

Also, Panasonic didn't jump into the HDV consortium, but are they going to offer something better?

Ta
Aaron

> I can't see spending that much money on something that
> doesn't even have uncompressed audio

What's all the fuss about compressed audio? From my experience MPEG layer II at 384 Kbps should be virtually indistinguishable from linear 16 bit audio, and depending on the AD converter used, it might be even better. Psychoacoustic band masking based audio representations have the potential of handling a wider dynamic range than 16-bit linear audio.

Also, when recording sound that does not have significant spectral content (i.e.: human voices) this kind of codec does a great job because the unused frequency band's bandwidth is "borrowed" to the significant bands. So compressed audio that at a certain bandwidth gives you certain quality for full spectrum content (i.e. rock music) will give you much better quality with simpler sound.

Stereo DVDs are compressed at 160-192 Kbps and I haven't heard of anyone complaining about that.

Those people who complain about compressed audio on the FX1 are the same people who mysteriously don't complain about the video compression on their DV25 camcorders. And this DV compression is not very efficient verses MPEG2 to boot.