Have a Canon HG20, and I like it, except that it does 24p in a 60i wrapper. Do the new Canons do 24p native? - meaning no more inverse telecine? It might be worth it to upgrade just for that. Well, that and I'm moving to a PAL country next week...

The Canon VIXIA HV40 (HDV) and VIXIA HF S21, S20 and S200 (AVCHD) all offer Native 24p.

Wonderful; I'll order an S200 when the price drops to around $800US. Meantime, I gotta figure out how to get the audio from the software program I'm using to do the inverse telecine in sync with the video...

The HF S200 / 20 / 21 start shipping in April. I wouldn't expect a price drop until later on after Summer.

Not necessarily. If history is any guide, by June, discount web-only retailers just might be selling it in your price range already. Usually, it doesn't take more than 2-3 months for the price to start dropping.

I wonder how low the HF-S1x cams will go when the retailers close them out around May. If they get low enough, I'd sure like to see my son replace the HV20 he has with one of them. I bet I see a lot more footage of my grandkids once he's shooting tapeless (especially if I make sure he has 4GB SDHC cards that he can easily copy straight to cheap-a-cheap DVDs, to send me the raw footage).