Canon took four years to update their famed GL2 cam, but today they have: The XH G1 and XH A1. The two cameras offer a slew of new options to the prosumer, not least of which is the HD resolution offered by the HDV format. Both cams feature the same 16:9, 1/3-inch CCDs of Canon’s XL H1, along with 1080i recording at 60 and 24fps and Canon’s 24p-like 24f option. The XH cams nicely fill the GL2 gap, trading the XL’s interchangeable lenses for size and cost savings. Both models feature 2.8-inch LCDs, 20X zoom lenses and even XLR inputs, but the XH G1 has an extra “jack pack” and a $3000 premium. What’ll that three grand get you? Pro ports like HD/SD-SDI, Genlock and TC in/out that allow a serious shooter to output uncompressed HD footage for recording to another format with less compression than the consumer-ish HDV tapes.
This will be a great advantage to the folks who want to have higher quality video- but they will still have to use the camera to play the tapes which degrades the equipment over time.
The vanilla XH A1 version goes for $4000, and should be available in October, while the XH G1 will follow in November for $7000.
This is from Camcorderinfo