Which Camcorder Format?

[ultras67]

When my digital camera when temporarily phut I started to look at the possibility of camcorders as a possible replacement.

 

I know that as still cameras they are well behind dedicated stills but as almost all my photos I take are only looked at on a monitor or a web site and not printed I started to think they might be a possible replacement.

 

Anyway, my camera is now working again but I am wondering whether to treat myself to a camcorder and help record those "special" moments.

 

Now, which format is going to be the best Mini DV, DVD, hard Disk? None of the web sites I have read have gone definately down one road or another, they think that DVD or HD will be the way to go but is it?

[Boring_Man]

I have a mini-DV on order and will be happy to discuss it with you the next time we get together. The DVD models seem to be best for ease of use, but if you're into editing they are apparently hardest to manage. They also had a bad reputation for picture quality, which is odd because pixels are pixels and I don't think there's any lens difference, but that was the story. Some of the newer models have allegedly fixed the alleged problem. The mini-DVs are better for editing, but for ease of viewing (other than on a computer) you'll still need to burn a DVD.

 

I don't think any of the current formats is going to disappear any time soon, so the real choice seems to be whether you want to watch your video right away (DVD) or prefer to fiddle with it a bit (mini-DV).