Brendan,
I've never shot with a GL2, so I can't really give you a good comparison. However, based on my experience with the A1, that same footage with the A1 on VIVIDRGB, would make the plants on the ground and the blue sky really pop out. I've noticed a great increase in green with VIVIDRGB while shooting.
In addition, you'd of course get the higher resolution and 16:9 of HDV. I think the shot you posted looks great, but in my opinion (and it's just MY opinion), it could look even better in 16:9 to give the griffon more room for his wings.

Brendan,
I've never shot with a GL2, so I can't really give you a good comparison. However, based on my experience with the A1, that same footage with the A1 on VIVIDRGB, would make the plants on the ground and the blue sky really pop out. I've noticed a great increase in green with VIVIDRGB while shooting.
In addition, you'd of course get the higher resolution and 16:9 of HDV. I think the shot you posted looks great, but in my opinion (and it's just MY opinion), it could look even better in 16:9 to give the griffon more room for his wings.

Thank you for those observations Ken. Please stay with this one more time.

I now understand what VIVIDRGB would do to the blues and greens. I can also see that 16:9 would have just about accommodated the griffon's wings (though it was really my fault that I didn't anticipate him coming close and zoom out a bit).

What I want to understand is ... exactly what change/improvement on the image quality would be achieved if I had the higher resolution of HDV? The pixel count of your machine compared to mine looks like this:

XHA1 3 x .33" ccd x 520,000 (= 1.56 MP effective pixels - movie)
GL2 3 x .25" ccd x 440,000 (= 1.32 MP effective pixels - movie)

I don't need an answer in the form of pixel measurement. I'm just wishing there was somebody out there with bird flight or horse racing or windsurfing footage on XHA1 who would kindly post 2 tiny clips that illustrated the superiority in image quality of XHA1 over GL2 or even HD over SD?

Sorry to butt in guys but seeing as this is now completely off topic, I would like to suggest that you open a new post.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=98122