I can't say that I've always agreed with things said by the founder of Oakley (sunglasses) and RED, but one recent quote from Jannard resonates fully: "No one in this industry [cameras] seems to move unless they are forced to." He cites that as one of the reasons why he started RED (Jannard formerly used Canon equipment in his work--amongst other things, he photographed most of the Oakley sunglass ads along the way). As much as Nikon and Canon and others all claim to be innovators and pushing the technology envelope, in terms of things that are useful to photographers that open up new capabilities, the camera companies generally wait until someone proves something is necessary before moving towards it. The CHK hacks for Canon and PTool hacks for the Panasonic cameras are just two examples of where the user knows best.
The question has always been this: what do you have to do to force the industry to move off its own engineering agenda and onto that of the user? It appears that the answer is: build a better mousetrap. The fear of being left behind or losing their key audience is what motivates the Japanese companies, not anticipating what the user actually wants or needs. In retrospect, perhaps I was mistaken in not accepting to lead a startup alternative F mount competitor when it the idea was floated a couple of years ago.
What Jannard's RED designs are provoking is that we'll soon see DSLRs that record 2k/4k/5k raw video in 4:2:2 color, mainly because someone else (RED) showed the Japanese companies that's what the pros wanted. Will Nikon provide that soon? No, I doubt it. My guess is that any such major changes would wait for the D4 generation. We'll probably get some 1080P and optional frame rate options on a model or two between now and then, but I'd be surprised if we got any more advanced video features before Nikon's next flagship appears. (That should be sometime in July or August of 2011 for those not paying attention.)