Newbie advice

Hi all - i have just become a Dad and in order to get some suitable ammunition to embarrass him when he is older the in laws have offered upto £250.00 for a camcorder.

I have no idea what is good and what is not so any advice would would be welcome. Cant even work out if a HD or memory card cam is best for starters then someone said MiniDV would be good which confused me further.

Ideally a camcorder which takes decent stills would be ideal as i dont want to lug around lots of gear!!! Current still cam is a Panasonic FZ7 so something of that comparable quality for still images would be nice but maybe unrealstic within my budget.

Any advice would be welcome!!

Thanks.