My experience is that Sony usually meets its announced release dates. Depending on how you define "mid" I guess mid June lasts another three days or so, so we'll see some time this week I guess.
I am also looking forward to this update, I just completed a project for one of my local bands outdoor concerts using my HD camcorder, converted to regular DVD and it looks pretty good, can't wait to render the same project in glorious HD with HD menu's as well...
Maybe Wednesday......
Oh well, another week to go, sad thing is I just got Pinnacle 12 to pass the time, and have rendered several projects with HD menu's and the whole works, really looks nice, hopefully sony will get its Butt in gear and give us what everyone else already provides.....
I hope they've implemented some sort of flowchart. That's the one thing that Encore does that I'm not willing to give up. Without it, you're creating the DVD structure blind.
sad thing is I just got Pinnacle 12 to pass the time
Sure, you can create HD projects, but give it a month. That's the longest it takes for Pinnacle Studio to show its true colors. When we get our stable, reliable DVDA5, you will have just got done pulling out half your hair trying to figure out why Studio crashes every time you switch from the menu designer to the timeline. ;)
Yes, I've been there. Then I switched to Vegas+DVD and never looked back.
I said the same thing after Pinnacle v 7,8 &9. Haven't used it since until I tried out V12. VERY STABLE. Perhaps it took them that long. LOL Personally, I still don't like Pinnacle Studio in general. Adding menus to the Timeline isn't intuitive for me.
However Pinnacle knows how to cater to newbies! The new montage templates are great, but I never found the Boris Graffiti text effects. One thing Pinnacle does best and that's making things SIMPLE and easy to use although sometimes TOO simple and not flexible.
FWIW never been a big Pinnacle fan, but the parent company, if I'm not mistaken Sonic, is a standard for DVD expertise - not that all of their products have shown it. ;-)
When using Vista, I for one have at times come very close to wishing all sorts of very painful things on whomever was responsible for Sonic's Cinemaster audio.
But, the know-how is there, & if they got their act together, might make for *very* decent software.
All I know is I have payed out a lot of money gearing up for Bluray editing, New HD camcorder, Rode Video Mic, Vegas 8 Pro, and just last night I bought a LG Bluray burner Off Newegg...Jeezzzzz, I will spend the rest of the year paying this stuff off....Oh well,I will have a blast anyway...