The RED CEO slowly reveals the December 3rd announcement

Some may call it a "press release strip-tease", the RED CEO is slowly but steadily teasing and revealing nuggets from the December 3rd announcement in his own RED forum.

So far the following has been revealed:

• Things changed since November 13 - the SPECS have CHANGED
  
• The RED ONE upgrade plans have changed
  
• Epic X will be a limited edition bundle based on the Epic S35 (uses 30x15mm sensor), selling for the same price as the Epic S35 "brain" ($28,000) but will include a CF, Battery and I/o modules as a bonus and use REDCODE 250 instead of REDCODE 225. "RED ONE" owners can trade it in for a $17,500 allowance
  
• delivery dates may drift by a few weeks
  
• The price for the Scarlet 2/3" with fixed 8x zoom is revealed, it will be $3000 for the "Brain" and "Lens" and $3750 for the complete kit. The 2/3" body-only option is $2500.
  
• Some prices of the more expensive units dropped by $2000 - the biggest price drop impact is for the Scarlet FF35 now listed at $9750, down from the original announcement price of $12000.
  
• a long list of lenses is given, but I don't know if there are any new ones. They mention the PL Mount (primes and zooms), miniRED (2/3") and the FF35 (yes 35mm full frame).
  
• lots of (computer-generated I presume) images of the cameras have been uploaded as well
  
• hot feature: FF1080p (using whole sensor to shoot 1080p)
  
• I think that's all

There's also another thread, where the RED forum members are posting their opinions and reactions as things get revealed - already 23 pages long in just 2.5 hours. Jumped to over 60 after the announcement.

For our previous RED posts, be sure to check the RED mini-blog, which features the long post that detailed the November 13 announcement - a good primer to RED for photographers who haven't heard of it yet.

Early Opinion
I am by no means a RED expert, but after RED was banging the drums for so long on "obsolescence obsolete", RED is already offering a "trade-in" option for their original RED ONE, thus making the use of the term "obsolescence obsolete", well, ...obsolete.

But to their credit, they are offering RED ONE owners an upgrade path that gives them a generous $17,500 trade-in value. Does your DSLR manufacturer do that?

We tried to give RED the benefit of the doubt, but it looks like today's "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT" is not really big, but rather a continuation and fine-tuning of the November 13 announcement.

Nevertheless, RED's design of a modular mix-and-match system puts the "frozen in evolution" "SLR traditionalist" big wigs to shame for not even trying to come up with new designs that take advantage of technological advances beyond the narrow scope of "SLR Traditionalism".

But don't get the RED CEO angry and ...angrier. Imagine if the Canon or Nikon CEO showed up in the dpreview forums to answer questions after a new flagship DSLR was announced *cough* D3x *cough*

In all seriousness, that's probably why most company executives don't interact directly in the forums with actual users. It's really "mavericky" to see the CEO of a company scold people because they asked the "wrong question".

The coolest comment so far is this one, #599.

That's all for now, unless more announcements are made!

PS: The RED CEO has been added to our list of Mavericks.