Hard drive based camcorders?

[Kingsly]

Has anyone used them? Are they and good? What (if any) brand/model would be suggested?

[Artful Dodger]

Has anyone used them? Are they and good? What (if any) brand/model would be suggested?

Double check in the video section here at MR as a few people asked this Q this past weekend. To answer fast though I'm not sure about the video quality since I was able to see some footage this weekend. My MiniDV looked better and this was compairing using my JVC to my friends neighbors JVC HDD unit. Great idea okay quality :cool: I'd rather go with a 3ccd cam instead for the same cost.

[jsw]

The compression algorithms are lossier; reviews I've seen indicate that the difference is noticeable when viewed side-to-side with tape-based camcorders but not necessarily noticeable when viewed in isolation.

The best-reviewed HD camcorder I've seen is the Sony DCR-SR100.

One thing to take into account is the vastly improved editability and access times of material on the camcorder; the slight loss of perceived quality might be more than made up for by more actual use of it.