I want!

Schweet Schwag Almighty! Yes, CES seemed a bit flat this year, evo rather than revo. But dropping prices and more content never hurt anybody that I can tell.

-mike

My MacBook (black) updated just fine, but I wrote here that there are some issues for some users with PCIe cards:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/mcurtis/story/beware_1056_upgrade_2007_mac_pro_owners/

Beware those with PCIe cards like RAID and HD-SDI!

Details are sketchy, but it is INCORRECT to assume that it'll ship this year. Prototype to be shown at NAB is all they've said. They said prototypes, not even functional prototypes. Look at the release schedule of Red as announced vs. how long it actually took to ship...and then to be fully functional (no audio recording onboard until very recently, for instance). They've shipped something like 250 cameras to date, and are (ever) at the precipice of going into bulk production.

So, my guess: non-functional prototypes shown at NAB.

Images from sensor over the summer.

Working cameras at IBC.

Shipping by NAB 2009.

Many possible release dates along the way, but hopefully they'll have learned from their virtually never accurate guesstimates for Red One ship dates to just ship it when it is ready.

-mike

the camera has an HDMI out - one could always buy a $250 Blackmagic Intensity card and capture over that uncompressed to a RAID, or transcode on the fly to DVCPRO HD or whatever your NLE hardware and software support.

Red Drive?

I'm writing this December 21st, after perusing the best/worst

Gregory and hazchem - I respectfully disagree with your stance on Red - I email with the Red team several times a week, have been to their offices and watched them shoot test footage with the sensor test platform, Dave Stump, a respected Hollywood DP has shot with that test platform as well. I expect to lay hands personally on a working prototype probably in the next month or so.

Bill - the benefit of 4K, esp. 4K RAW compressed, is that it will generate a REALLY nice 2x oversampled 2K/1080p or 1080i, or a triple oversampled 720p. Cleaner, smoother, better signal to noise ratio. It'll be worth doing, even for HD projects.

-mike

can't resist - OK, the Red dig - they never said it would be shipping by now!

: )

...although they did at one time, when they said "no promises" hope to have it shipping by year end. Looks like they'll maybe have testing units to folks out-of-house by year end at best...not the same.

-mike

I think the Red will have advantages in image quality and resolution, and that'll be a clincher for a lot of folks. They both have flexible shooting modes, but those modes are very different. Shooting situation will permit tethered shooting? SI-2K can be smaller. Need self contained? Red can be smaller.

SI-2K footage looks noisy, Red looks super clean.

Yeah, I don't know if anybody else, does, but I see those dots quite often when watching movies in the theater. I figure part of it is the critical eye I've developed from staring unblinking and unflinchingly close at moving digital images over the last 15 or so years, but does anybody else notice and get annoyed by them?

Or are they so fast you don't even see them?

-mike