[norderney]

I have seen some JVC Camcorders with built in hard drives. The Everio GZ-MG30 has a built in 30Gb hard drive, 25X optical zoomand even has a SD memory card slot for extra data storage. Apparently there are 4 shooting modes which give you either 7hours, 10 hours, 14 hours or in very poor quality mode 37 hours.

Does anybody have any experience of using them, or are there any better ones on the market with built in hard drives?

I do not have a Camcorder at the moment so have no previous experience of using one.

Any comments would be appreciated.

[jomike]

See the recent post on the JVC MG50 by Pinoy

[senu]

I "borrowed" one for a few days last week and was impressed with the sheer convenience and quality.With these products the possibility and ease of editing your finished video is always a question. A degree of in-camera editing is possible though.
The *.mod files produced by it are editable on PC via the supplied software and Avid/ Pinnacle Studio 10 accepts them. Not having to change tapes in the middle of an event at a crucial moment means never losing any part of the event in your footage: That and not needing to keep buying tapes is great concept The finished dvd has standard vob (mpeg2) .
I also saw the whole JVC Everio range at the AV show in Hammersmith on friday and was able to see the entire range. They seem very well built suitably compact and not overprized.
The jury is out in the mainstream video editing commmunity about thier use for serius professional / semi professional work and they are watching events . In that Community ever in the quest for quality over convenience, High Definition Video is now the in- thing. Even so I would certainly buy it over a dvd based camcorder and even die hard DVcam minidv users could find themselves using it as a spare for candid family videos or a holiday carry along.