If you just want stills, I'm sure there will be cheap enough / good enough cameras to meet your needs from Canon / Nikon etc. If however, you want a parity of quality across stills and motion, very high speed, or very high resolution, RED will suit your needs. The visually lossless REDCODE RAW codec would allow you to shoot many times more stills on a CF card than you can today, while keeping all the advantages of RAW. After going through about 6 CF cards doing a wedding earlier in the year, I'd certainly have found that useful, not to mention the hard drive space to back it all up.
As for claims, well, the proof is in the pudding, but the pudding is in the oven right now. The cooks are working on baking it as well and as fast as they can. I hope you can enjoy trying the puddings when they come out of the oven.
Graeme
I don't believe it. 24 MP isn't that great a difference from 21. About 7.5% increase in resolution. I'm not convinced that RED's RAW files are any better than anyone else's. As for being smaller, that would only be if they were compressed, not such an innovation. If it's lossy compression, it's lossy. The smaller the file is made through this compression, the more data is lost. If they do any more compression than Nikon does in its lossy scheme, then it will be noticed, despite RED's claims. Besides, as they constantly say on their site, the product is subject to DRASTIC change in specs and price. We don't even know what these will actually turn out to be!
In addition the only really interesting camera for high IQ stills is the FF35. With the viewfinder, handgrip, and battery, this will cost somewhere around $16,000, or more, likely more when it finally comes out. That doesn't include a lens. This is into medium format territory.
It also looks to weigh a good five+ pounds when equipped as a complete camera. For those complaining about the size and weight of the top Canons and Nikons, this is a boat anchor.
The other cameras are lightweight in IQ for stills, or way too expensive.
You can get medium format cameras from well respected manufacturers with equal, or higher IQ for well under what they are asking. RED's cameras are also woefully lacking in any modern ergonomic features.
Whatever you say, these are video cameras first, and still cameras second.