Just to clarify as this thread has been brought back to life - my skepticism was on Nikon being about to address OP's #2.

In Europe we need the 50hz flickering to be corrected!

Question that needs to be asked on the D90 video encoding shortcomings is this:
Is there enough CPU power left to encode the movies differently / better?
There are lots of shortcuts you can take in MJPG encoding - lots of corners you can cut to save CPU requirements while being "good enough". Not having seen the problematic artifacts I can't say for sure, but it would not surprise me in the least if Nikon is already pushing the edge of performance and can't improve encoding quality without sacrificing some other aspect.

Comparing D90 and iPhone in any aspect can be only a joke :)

@mb
As I wrote (starting the post), video encoding has evident issues. This is not only my opinion that in many situations you get visible JPG artifacts which looks ugly... So there is still room for improvement but the question is if there are any efforts from Nikon to improve anything for older products. There is already a D300s which probably has this fixed and added the stereo sound with external mic... Now Nikon can say to D90 users "if you like to have better (less problematic) video feature please buy D300s " :)

Anyway i'm really very satisfied with my D90. I'm using it mainly for taking pictures and this feature works great for me. I'm not going to sell it because of some minor issues. However it would be nice to see any effort from Nikon to solve this minor issues and satisfy not only professional customers but also those amateur part of "Nikon community"

And I am sure you could actually use an iPhone as a regular cellular phone without to many problems but old Nokia 6310 is far better for that purpose.
And you will never be able to take a photo (or video) that will be anywhere near what you could do with D90.
And I really do not see any problems with D90 video feature at all so please explain.

I surely didn't buy the D90 because it could record video, but the video that it does record is pretty atrocious. It really shouldn't be labeled a feature if my friends iPhone can get video with fewer problems.

I have had my D90 for several months and have yet to even try the movie function. I have a movie camera for that.

Carl

Dear Daniel if I can suggest, instead of switching cameras back and forth I would suggest You to start taking pictures.

Hey, i am Daniel from Germany, so please excuse if i don't write english that well.

A few days ago, i bought a Canon 500d (Rebel T1i /Kiss X3). I decided to do that instead of buying the D90, because the Image-Quality seems not to differ very much from the D90 or D5000, but the 500d did HD (1280x720) Video at 30 fps instead of 24fps.

Well, then i realized, that it will never be easy to make a 30 fps Video to a constant floating 25 fps Video, which we need here in Germany for PAL Output at the most TV's right now. Also, the 24p (24 fps) seems to be the standard format for cinema.

Then there were some other upcoming issues, like the slightly better performance of the dynamic range and noise of the D90 compared to the Canon eos 500d.
So i went back to the store and gave the 500d back to get a D90.

All right, so i tried it. And i have to say, it is a very nice photo-camera and i think, in photo(Main!)-mode it is better than the 500d. Now i will not write much about the pros and cons between the two cameras, because the topic is the video mode.

So i did some Videos at daylight. Everything was fine and i get was i was expecting, since i watched so many Videos on youtube (in HD !).

Then the sun descents, the lights were switched on and the waves began to travel. Flicker on my Videos!.

All the Lights in the City are pulsing with the Frequency of the alternating current of the powernetwork. And here in Europe, we have 50Hz, so 100 times a second, because the intensity of the Lightbulb is maximum at the negative and positive maximum of the current. I think i am writing to much what you already know.
So, this problem is general for a roling shutter, which the D90 uses, because it has a CMOS Sensor. The wobble effect has the same root, of course.

I can live with the wobble-effect, but the Flicker is very ugly. I would go so far, that i think, in this condition, the D90 is not suitable for indoor and night, because then i have flicker 80% of the time. (of course i know the workaround, were i have to play with AE-L and EV and ">"+"up" or "down" and hopefully get low ISO...
But As i said, i have seen much Videos on the internet and i really think, the new good quality of such consumer cameras are a opportunity for a new phaenomenon, were more and more non proffessionals are publishing nice short films or documentarys. But non of them wants a camera, were you don't even can shoot indoors or at night.

So since we know, that a manual exposure control of the D90 will give the user the power to make the Flicker completely (or at least almost) go away in alomst every situation, i would be very surprized, if Nikon will not present a new Firmware or solution for this problem in the very near future.

Since i don't know, when such a Solution will come, i will go back to the store and get the EOS 500D back.

Good Luck for all of you !

Daniel

mb, I do not agree that this issues are not important. It was not so relevant for me to have the video recording, but if I already have it I would like it to work fine. I would say to NIKON " do not advertise this video as it has no enough quality to call it HD or improve it. If you implement Live view and it does not work as designed please also improve it.... If something is not well designed and is not going to work well do not implement it. Thats it :)" I did not bought Nikon for its name but for the quality of the product.

To be realistic none of the so called issues you mentioned are reason enough to fiddle with firmware on D90 because it works flawlessly as it is. Nikon had much time to prefect it on D300. I do not think improvement to a marginal feature such as video is a reason.
Some of the best Nikon models at a time (D2Xs, D50 or my favorite D70s and probably others) never had updated firmware.

So it looks like Nikon has much more to improve in the D90 firmware - LV bug (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1034&message=31611087&changemode=1)
Are they going to release the upgrade in Q2....?

I agree. I do not expect anything amazing from D90 regarding video. But there is a room for big improvement which is just the enocding issue..... I'm not waiting for "jelly" efect to be compensated as it is sensor (hardware) issue and they are not able to correct it by software. Autofocus could be also good thing to have when recording video but...
I do not think Nikon has to worry about camcorder market :) Canon rather should and they put already some more competetive produscts like 5dMKII and new Rebel 500.....

Well I wouldn't count on some radical improvement on the movies as D90 is still a photo camera. I don't think that they will put too much steam into making the videos perfect as it would undermine the camcorder market :)

Hi I wonder when can we expect new firmware for D90. I would like:
1. Better Automatic White Balance.
2. Possibility to choose encoding quality for Movies ( or quality improvement) currently there are visible artifacts what makes this 720p actually useless :(
3. It could be good to have posibility of switching between manual and auto ISO in some fast way like putting AutoISO ON setting in pool between HI0.3 and LO0.3 values in easy iso or manual ISO pool.

There was some fake rumor in december about new firmware release but nothing new since then.... Did anybady heard about that. Its a lot of time since body was released and it looks like:
a) Nikon forget about D90 users - wa are amators ( who anyway generate for them a lot of incoms) and they are more focused on improvements for proffesionals- there already released upgrades for D300 and D700.
b) They remember about us but they want to test the new firmware extensively before puting it to the market.
c) They remember about us but they have big troubles with correcting existing firmware issues. :)

What's your opinion......?