When you are in the market for a camcorder there are many brands and types to choose from. First you have to decide how much you have to spend. If money is not a big deal and you want the best then look for 3CCD camcorders. They use 3 chips for each color instead of one chip for all three colors combined. They have a much better color and picture but cost a lot more. Prices start at around $1000 up to several grand easily. These are more for serious and professionals only. For most regular people that is too much to pay for a camcorder.

They're are mainly 3 types of camcorder made today which are DVD camcorders, Hardrive camcorders, or Mini DV camcorders. You will see some older format technology sold on Ebay such as Hi-8, VHS, compact VHS but these are all on the way out. However they can be found for very cheap and if you aren't picky then they just might be right for you.

Prices:$350-$600

Dvd camcorders are nice and convenient because they record right onto mini dvds so they are no tapes to rewind like Mini DV and other tape formats. Also it has time stamp and bookmarks so you can easily pick which scenes to play back.



Prices $$300-$500

Mini DV camcorder are cheaper than dvd camcorders since they are older technology and have been out longer. Mini DV camcorders are all mostly small in size however dealing with tape can be annoying and time consuming plus you can't just give the tape to someone and let them watch it on their tv or dvd player like the DVD camcorder.



Prices $500-$900

Hard drive/Flash drive camcorders are the new rage. You can save hours of footage on 20gb, 30, 40 gb models. Most of these camcorders are exceptionally small since there are no tape or dvd drives to deal with or buy which save you a lot of money in the long run. The price is a lot higher than Mini DV camcorders and a little higher than DVD camcorders.

$100-$200 Flash drive is like the hard drive so I included in the same category. Flash drive are usually much smaller in capacity so they usually only take 1 hour or less of footage but are the smaller camcorders out there. However most flash drive camcorders are more like toys and are a joke. When it comes to camcorders stand away from no names and stick to brand names. You want to remember your memories with good quaility not a blurry mess.

The two I would say to go for today is DVD camcorders and Hard drive camcorders.
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Interestingly, you present only the cons of miniDV tapes and only the pros of other formats. Here's a few things to balance the discussion:

1. DVDs have unknown life spans and must be handled carefully. If you shoot on DVDs, you have no backup of your video. MiniDV tapes are renown for their life span. And once video is captured to a computer, the tape serves as your backup with no copying required.

2. Hard drive cams fill up. If you're on vacation or otherwise away from your computer, you'll need to bring a laptop of something to offload your video. MiniDV tapes are exceptionally small and easy to carry. At one hour of video per tape, you can easily carry a dozen or more hours worth of tape in a small bag or purse.

3. Hard drive cams are more fragile than miniDV cams. Drop a hard drive cam and you will probably lose all (several hours) worth of video. Drop a miniDV cam and you may not lose anything. If you should have damage from a drop or maybe a tape jam, most likely you'll lose only a few seconds of video if that much.

4. Hard drive cams save video in files which are erased from the cam after copying them to a computer. If you want backups, as in the case of DVD cams, you need to make extra copies. There is no extra copying required to get a backup with miniDV tapes.

5. While hard drive cams take less time to transfer than miniDV cams which transfer in real time, compared to the amount of time spent on editing a project, this difference is often minimal. Besides, you don't have to sit and watch the transfer if you don't want to. However, if you plan to view your video clips to decide what to use and what to toss, you can do that as it transfers. I often make notes during transfer about which clips will make good title or credit backgrounds and which I might like to use in different parts of my video. If you want to view all your video to prepare for a project after transferring from a hard drive cam, it will take you just as long to watch the video files as if they came from a miniDV cam.

6. Probably most important, DVD and hard drive cams record video in a compressed format, MPEG-2. MiniDV cams store in a very lightly compressed DV format. DV give you superior video quality and is the preferred format for editing.

Good luck.

Dennis