These are the world's biggest consumer electronics (and pro video) giants. Which one do you like better and why.

I like Sony better. IMHO the products, although usually a little more expensive, are better made; the Sony products have a better reputation word-wide; Sony is more into the high end.

In the low end the credit goes to Matsushita, which was the first with low cost HD -- DVHS, HD DV. But I think that it will be the blu-ray HD DVD format that will be the true breakthrough in low cost HD videotaping/recording. Sony and Nishia? basically developed it and then Sony involved other companies, including Panasonic, with the blu-ray HD consortium.

I used to favour Sony products. But they are expensive, and I find their colours to be too 'blue'. No experience of Panasonic...except that they have a typical large corporate website which is nigh on impossible to penetrate.

I prefer Canon for both colour and website. :-/

Yup. Me too. Canons and Panasonics I like. You can't beat their colors. Well, maybe Canon's color is a bit better than Pana's. I sure like XL1S footage!

There's an interesting article in this week's BARRON'S titled (I think) "The Laggard's Club". They list around 100 stocks which during the past 15 years have underperformed a completely risk free investment in short term treasuries (which yielded ~5% during this period).

Interesting membership in this club: Matsushita, Sony and Apple (among others). There are also many other well known/prestigious companies that share this dubious disctinction, including Dow Jones who publishes BARRONS's and the WALL STREET JOURNAL. So much for the "buy and hold" approach these days.... ;-)

Oh yeah, back on topic... I prefer Sony and have a PDX-10, VX-2000, two WEGA's, CD deck, cassette deck, tuner, walkman, etc... :-)

I like Canon first, Sony second, Panasonic third. Though it really depends on which products your talking about.

I think Canon does the best when they build something new and cutting edge, IMO they seem to make items that are more "human friendly".

Sony's products are top notch and many times "technically" better, but they're not as "friendly", cool looking but to me too cybernetic.

Panasonic does better when the technology is established and they're churning it out cheap and good.