I own two Canon video cameras, an XL H1, and an HV20. The first retails for about $7,000 these days, and the second can be picked up from just about 
anywhere for around $700 (or you can get a slightly newer version, the HV30 for just a little bit more). If you’ve read my reviews, you know that the divergent prices reflect some serious differences in professional capability.
The interesting thing is that under the hood, the cameras are pretty similar. Yes, the XL has 3 CCD chips behind a big interchangable lens, and the HV only has one miniscule CMOS chip behind a little fixed lens — not to mention some serious differences in manual controls and connection ports for things like timecode, genlock, and HD-SDI — but the actual brain of both cameras, the chip which processes the images, runs the viewfinder, mixes the audio, and encodes the HDV, is the exact same Digic DV II chip.
The same is true of Canon’s still cameras. There are a lot of differences between their big black SLRs and their little silver point-and-shoot cameras, but most are run by 
identical Digic II or Digic III digital signal processors. It’s cheaper for Canon to develop a single powerful chip that can handle consumer and professional processing than to design and manufacture multiple chips, so we get the same processor whether we buy a $1200 SLR or a $120 pocket cam.
So, why don’t we get access to the same features for a tenth the price? First, those who want a point-and-shoot camera generally want to point and shoot, not mess with a bunch of complicated settings. Also, the tiny form factor of the consumer cameras means there is a limited amount of space for all the controls that would be needed to adjust a bunch of settings quickly. And finally, most manufacturers want to maintain a big difference in features available in the consumer and professional cameras to protect the market for the more expensive products.
But, with a little aftermarket tweaking, you can access more professional features on the point-and-shoot Canons. A bunch of clever hackers have cracked the firmware that the little cameras run, and added new features supported by the processing chip. All you need to do is download the new firmware, called CHDK, and run it from a memory card in the camera. It doesn’t break the existing firmware; all it does is add a ton of new menu options to a new “alt” mode.
This will allow you to control the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed independently, and expand that shutter speed to extremes far beyond the original limits; anywhere from 64 seconds to 1/60,000 of a second. You can save RAW files instead of being limited to JPEGs, add features like battery meters, zebra bars, and histograms to the viewfinder, use the USB port to control the camera, and run multi-shot scripts for things like motion sensing, HDRI exposure, and time-lapse photography.
Time-lapse photography is one of many great reasons for a videographer to have a still camera. The video above was shot using a Canon 30D on my Manfrotto tripod and computer control (although you can also use a remote timer). I think I could have got similar results by duct-taping a cheap camera running CHDK to a tree. Maybe better results, since the computer dropped a few frames.
The downside to CHDK is that you need to make some fairly complicated settings manipulations using only the few navigation buttons that the menu offers, so it can take a lot of time to get the settings you need. And of course, you still have a tiny fixed lens and a cheap imaging sensor to contend with. CHDK doesn’t make your point-and-shoot equal to a SLR, but it does make it much more valuable than a normal consumer camera, and so I wouldn’t recommend buying anything but a Canon.
The next question is, do we have a hacked firmware for the HV20? No, or at least not yet. The HV20’s little brother, the HF10, has been cracked, and may get some extra features soon. There are people working on the HV20 now, however, and if we can get the ability to individually control aperture and shutter speed, or at least be able to turn the gain off (or adjust the image settings in more detail, or do numeric white balance, or export RAW data over HDMI, etc, etc), it will be a much more powerful camera, and more useful for filmmakers. I can’t wait to see what might be possible.
