You are not alone, in Moscow both the 370 and 500 are still at MSRP! I flew to New York to buy the 370 + accessories and saved on the equivalent of 4 round-trip tickets! It's like the concept of something becoming cheaper over time exists only in America.
I'm somewhat interested in the 3100, so when you do go there, please find out more about it, especially how it compares to the 370. It's MSRP is supposed to be $20k, which is a lot cheaper than the Sony PMW 500 and it comes with a better codec to boot, but with it being limited to only 1080p and the fact that it doesn't use AVCultra yet makes me apprehensive.
Every camera in the Panasonic lineup is "limited to only 1080p", and none of them use AVC-Ultra. Ultra was never announced as an actual format, they announced that they would be using AVC-Ultra to go beyond what video can do. So maybe 2K, maybe 4:4:4, maybe 120fps, it was never really specified.
I can pretty much guarantee you that won't happen. AVC-Ultra isn't a "better" version of AVC-Intra or something, it's totally different. It's for 3-D, or 4K, or stuff like that. It's not for video, it's for "beyond" video. And besides, I don't think we've really heard one peep from them about AVC-Ultra since they first mentioned it in 2009.
Again, I don't know what you've been reading, but there has *never* been 1080p slow-mo in *any* 3000-series camcorder. Not the HPX3000, not the Varicam 3700, and not this new 3100. It's not as if there's somebody new there who's decided to downgrade the 3xxx series, it's never been there in the first place. There isn't (AFAIK) any such CCD chip that can do 1080/60p, anywhere. They'd have to go to CMOS to get that kind of capability, and that would be something new and different, not an HPX3xxx.
Ok, the 370 has an interlaced 1920x1080 chipset too, so why not add 720 which many people still use? There's really nothing to lose.
What's the point then? There are already plenty of industry standard formats that go "beyond video", adding AVC-ultra as an alternative to existing editing formats is weird.
Considering that people use dSLRs and RED cameras to film, I think we are past the point where it's valid to complain about headaches, because apparently there are people willing to deal with them.
I know the 3xxx series doesn't have those capabilities, what I am saying is that they should have those capabilities. BBC's Planet Earth series was shot on 720p Varicams because nature demands you have flexible shooting speeds, but it's been a long while since then and where is technology now? They would still have to have shot the series on the same cameras just to get effect they needed.
No, it doesn't. The 370 has a progressive chipset that does 60p progressive. 1920x1080 is created from a 1920x1080p scan.
Because video manufacturers don't have any such formats. Sony doesn't have anything on the market that goes beyond video, and neither does Panasonic, and neither does JVC. There are some digital cinema formats (such as Red 4K) but there are no formats used by the video equipment manufacturers. They are going to be jockeying for position for the next generation. Video goes up to 1920x1080i and 720/60p, at a maximum of 4:2:2 and 10 bits. Things like 12-bit and 14-bit, 4:4:4, 2K res, 1080/60p etc -- those are not video formats, and SMPTE hasn't standardized any of those things. Some people seem to think that 1080/60p is commonplace, when in fact no video standard for it even has been agreed upon yet. Those who are implementing it now are doing so prematurely and run the risk of finding out that their implementation will not be recognized when the final broadcast and transmission specs are codified and then monitors and televisions and broadcast towers are all established and may not work with the premature 1080/60p implementations.
You can say they "should" have them, but -- there's a whole world of broadcasters and television manufacturers and delivery formats and content producers and everyone who all has to get on the same page first. Red could step aside from all of that because Red *isn't* a video camera. You can't record video on a Red, you record digital cinema data files, which you can then post-process and release as video. That's different.
Doing so would be diametrically opposed to what those cameras are about. Broadcast cameras are absolutely designed to be 100% compliant. The last thing anyone wants on a broadcast camera is noncompliant features. Everything is supposed to work, to plug in, to connect, and to be fully compatible with any other piece of broadcast equipment.
unless you're sony which has 28mbps 1080 60p mp4 which isnt a standard
Sounds like a 500 replacement, so a 10~15k price doesn't sound out of line to me.