Poor quality noise reduction for Canon G10

Question

I recently bought a Canon G10, and I am disappointed at the quality of RAW conversions done by ACR/LR at anything approaching a high ISO. The out-of-camera JPEGs show much superior noise reduction to what I can get from RAW files, no matter how I tweak the noise reduction settings.
At ISO 80-100 both look essentially identical.
At ISO200 JPEGs show less and tighter grain than I can manage with RAW (unless I nuke the details with luminance reduction), but both are still very good.
At ISO400 ACR/LR's RAW conversion starts to fall apart. Chroma NR in RAW is still handled well, the grain size in RAW is much larger than the camera's JPEGs. I need to apply a lot of luminance NR to reduce the RAW grain to match the JPEGs, and when I do that I lose a lot of detail. And even then, the larger grain isn't as attractive as the JPEG.
At ISO800 this problem is even worse. Big ugly blobs abound in the RAW conversion. The JPEGs don't look great, but they're very usable, especially if you're willing to dip the shadows a bit to hide the worst of the noise.
ISO1600 is interesting. The JPEGs don't look great; there's a healthy amount of noise, and NR kills a lot of fine details. But the image is usable for 4x6's or sometimes even an 8x10. But the RAW files are awful! Even cranking chroma NR to 100, there's color noise to be seen. And even with very careful use of luminance NR and sharpening I can't results that are anywhere close to JPEG's level of detail and noise.
I understand that P&S cameras like the G10 are very noisy by DSLR standards and so this might not be a focal point of ACR/LR development, but I'm surprised and disappointed that the JPEG engine in the G10 can do a better job handling noise than ACR/LR. I guess my hope is that ACR/LR will at some point offer improved NR so I can create photos using RAW that look as good as JPEGs straight out of the camera. As it is right now I'm in the unfortunate position of shooting JPEG at high ISO to get usable noise performance. My dilemma is whether to even bother shooting RAW+JPEG when this IQ might be the best I ever get from ACR/LR for the G10.
I suppose my favored solution would be to either implement or license NR technology that matches NeatImage/NoiseNinja/NoiseWare. That feature alone would be worthy of justifying a 3.0 version for me. :)

Answer 1

Jeff, I won't debate that the output from the G10 at ISO800+ is poor.  It most certainly is!  And I know that simply eliminating the scads of noise in a G10 high ISO shot won't restore the detail the noise killed in the first place.  But with every other camera I've used with ACR and LR, the color noise slider eliminates all color noise at or before the "100" setting.  So I was surprised when that wasn't possible with the G10.
I don't currently own a camera that puts out an image quite as noisy as the G10 at ISO1600, but what about the A900 at ISO6400?
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA900/AA900hLL6407XNR.HTM
Or the 50D at ISO12800?
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E50D/E50DLL12807XNR.HTM
Both of those are horrifically noisy.  Worse than the G10 at ISO1600, I'd say.  But those cameras certainly aren't crap. They just offer ISO settings higher than some consider acceptable. But then again, some people consider anything higher than ISO200 on a 5D unacceptable, so it's obviously all relative. Point being, I would expect ACR to do the best job it could for any camera it supports, not just the best job it can do for only some of the cameras it supports.
In any case, I want ACR to be able to remove the color noise from my G10's images, just like it can with my other cameras.  I know the images are sub-standard when measured against a DSLR, but at least to my eyes, even very noisy images can look decent in small prints so long as there aren't big color blobs all over the place.
As for the luminance noise, I'm happier to live with that.  I'd be happy to eventually pay for a LR upgrade that gives me NR similar to what the high-end third-party apps do, because that feature would make each of my cameras geniunely more useful--and retroactively!  But a simpler request it seems is to recalibrate what "100" means for the G10.  At least then I could dispense with the JPEGs and still make an 8x10.