Hiya

Pretty much decided its between these two but have heard bad/good rumours about each:

Bad
Canon - motor noise, single CCD
Panasonic - no 16:9 mode

Good
Canon - 16:9 mode
Panasonic - 3CCD, 1.7MPixels

I'd basically want to use this to record footage of my family, and author to DVD at some point via the PC (I'm fairly familiar with TMpg, WinDV etc.). Still image quality is important too. Would I really miss the 16:9 mode on the Panasonic - can I convert to 16:9 when encoding to DVD? (Sorry if this is a stupid question).

Thanks for any thoughts

Speaking from past experience with Canon I would definately stay away. My canon camera stopped working and by the time I got a reply from their customer service department it was 1 week out of warranty and they refused to repair it. They wanted more to replace the motherboard than I payed for the camera.
I went for a sony model and have had no problems. I would never reccomend any Canon products to any one all because of bad customer service!!
Mike