An excellent read on all fronts.
I'm always happy to hear well-reasoned views on the VX vs. HD "issue".
I've said this before on here, but I've always wanted one of these hardcore VX dudes to try and use an adapter to put a traditional 4:3 fisheye on an above-average HD camera, and record with one of the 4:3 settings. Something like 1280x960. That way, you get the increased resolution and clarity while keeping the 4:3 aspect ratio, allowing you to shove the camera way up in the skater's shit and keep the excitement of Deathlens footy. NateNola on here sent me a clip of him doing this, though his DSLR only supported 4:3 modes at SD resolution. Still, the lens worked good and it was proper 4:3.
I'm also glad he mentioned the problem of the lack of HD camera standardization and quality. HD footage should not be judged based on some kid's T3i setup with stock recording settings; almost everything I see on YouTube from non-professional filmers in HD is grainy, washed out, and rendered so bad to the point where everything is soft. When you watch something filmed by Jon Miner, Ty, or that Huf filmer dude on actual purpose-built HD video cameras, the footage is absolutely incredible.
On a somewhat related note, HD footage cannot be judged in the format that it is currently being put out in. The VX footage of yore that VX purists hold dear is usually maxed out in terms of bitrate/render quality in a 480p Vimeo video or DVD... especially DVD's. A VX-filmed 40 minute video routinely takes up most of the 4 gigs on a DVD. However, HD filmers upload their full length video to youtube at 720p and the filesize ends up at sub 1-gigabyte-- some of the worst ones I've downloaded are 300-400mb. The HD footage has 2 times, sometimes 3 times the resolution and god knows how many times the effective bitrate and quality. But the HD footage we watch is compressed and eroded to sometimes 1/4th the quality of a skate DVD from 2003! It's crazy. There are definitely exceptions (Pretty Sweet's Blu-Ray was like 35 gigabytes), but your average thrasher part or whatever is encoded SO BAD.
If the quality we watch HD footage in scaled properly according to the DVD quality we judge VX footage by, maybe the average perception of HD would be different.
/essay mode.