Kisaha

I use the Sony A7RII (as well as the Panasonic GH4) at work every week.
Fact: My personal Canon C100 eats it for breakfast when it comes to motion cadence, rolling shutter, color science and overall cinematic quality. The 4K cameras might be sharper, but only by a little, and at the end of the day, resolution is the spec that matters to me least. All the fancy tech and high-power processing in the world doesn't matter if the image isn't pleased. And I mean pleasing right out of the camera, not pleasing after several hours in DaVinci resolve wrestling with SLog. Super flat profiles work great for RAW or 10 or 12-bit RGB video. For 8-bit compressed codecs, it's generally better to have a strong REC.709 image right off the bat.
Also, the A7RII overheats after about 10 minutes of recording. Not great for interviews or long takes.
The sad thing is, once upon a time, Sony had a magical camera called the F35, which had more mojo than anything this side of the Arri Alexa. And as much as people love to chalk it up to the CCD sensor, much of that same silky cinematic quality trickled down to the CMOS-carrying Sony F3, which as other people have pointed out, continues to be a beast of a camera, especially at the low, low prices that it now sells for. But somewhere along the way, Sony switched directions and decided to go for brute-force processing power and crazy specs, rather than real cinematic image quality. And as a result, while they have gained tremendous ground at the consumer and prosumer levels, they have ceded the high-end to Arri and Red. I have a lot of friends in rental houses and they clue me in as to what is going out most often:
1. Most people hire Alexas.
2. Can't afford Arri? Go for a Red.
3. Can't afford Red, but still need 4K? Sony, it is.
4. Don't need 4K? Have a Canon C300.

Absolutely agree with this one,
1. Most important - Higher bit rates is the thing we all need the most. Lets get rid of macroblocking and all sorts of problem.
2. Turn off the NoiseReduction - in my mind, the NR must slow eat a big chunk of processing power. If turned off, this power can be used elswhere.
3. 10 bit or 12RAW - I mean, honestly. You cant argue with this one.. 
4. Higher frame rates - is what makes the camera more appealing to us, but honestly, not more usable. Just makes it a better deal
5. Trying to disable crop 4K on NX500 and applieing 1 to 4 to NX500. That could make the camera more appealing to everybody. (not sure if we established already this is not possible?)

PS: Chant, as other stated, if you are dedicated to this task.. As other stated, dont be shy to ask for compensation or think of crowdfunding from us, if you plan to break in the camera and make it whole new better piece of tech.
 

The list of additions are interesting, I have to admit the focus will be on video and all other aspects will be secondary.
Found a few things. DRIMe-V clock rate seems to be 200mhz. And that seems.. low. Im expecting an NX1 in the next few weeks, so that is one thing I will test. May have to do some heat dissipation help, but from other things I have found in the fw that should be able to be pushed. If things are on the level of the sony a7(s) line up with their over heating issues I think a tad below that will suffice. The upper limit should be 700mhz+ But erring on the safe side will always be more logical.

**Edit** In additon to that finding, I will have to track the changes to see if they upped the clock rate in the later fw. I am working in the first revision as that has the largest file size, so I assumed it would have the most debug changes from the 1.0 layout, with the other firmwares focusing more on updates and camera usability changes.**
I wasnt intending to work on this tonight as I have some graphic design work I need to do, but the more I look, the juicer things get!

Higher bit rate recording for 4K and 1080p (160 Mbps+) Higher frame rates (4K/60 fps, 1080p/240 fps) 2K recording mode and/or 4K crop mode similar to NX500 Ability to turn off noise reduction completely

Depending on what I find there could be an option for a 1:1.29 lossless or a higher compression visually lossless hevc. Creating a custom lut for a more red like log seems possible also.
 The firmware seems more of a proof of concept that they left it open to change so many things. And more so to show they can go head to head with the established makers and make something better. Since this thread has garnered more interest I have shifted to put more hours into this dive I am doing.

I have made posts and posts about it in the "your ideal nx1 settings" thread. scientific depends on your definition of what a proper scientific approach would be, but i felt i was pretty methodical in trying to get the best image out of the camera possible. the problem is because I didn't apply a crazy filmy looking lut the end result, I dont think anyone cared

I think "just" 160/200 Mbits H265 would improve image a lot. But question now is not "how much" but "how"...:-)
 

Amazing offer Mattias, just unbelievable. Down here in Greece we have liberal immigrant policy as well, but extremely expensive NX equipment! NX500 is amazing for what it is, and I can have both NX1/NX500 plus 4 lenses and accessories on a small Lowe Pro Nova bag. Smallest 4K interview set ever.

Allow me to explain further rimpamposh, because that video is explaining the situation in my opinion in a twisted and counter intuitive way IMO.
Lets look at the RGB waveform of this NX1 file:

If you look at the top of the waveform it seems the highlights are clipped. However pay attention to the bottom right Clamp Signal checkbox that is checked on and that I circled in green. That clamp signal checkbox, clamps the display of the highlight. It does not DISPLAY in the waveform scope the highlights above the 100 line. However the information is in the video file, it is simply not displayed because that checkbox is checked.
 
Lets have a look at what our waveform looks like once we uncheck it:

As you can see we have more highlight information visible in the waveform scope than what was previously displayed. 
And that is all that has changed, the clamped highlight information above 100 is now displayed in the waveform monitor only. In our video it is still out of range because it is above the 100 line, so in our video those highlights are still clipped. How do we recover that information and unclip the highlights in the video? 
This is where in the video he says to set the 235 number. You do not need to do specifically do that, and you can do it with a variety of tools. And that specific amount will not be adapted to every situation. All you want to do is bring the highlights down. That is all. In this instance I did it as following:

You can do it in different ways. Hope it helps.