stick with my mini dv or hard drive

[Baron Von Doom]

im thinking of upgrading my panasonic nvgs4b mini dv camcorder. im just wondering if anyone has any experience of these hard drive camcorders such as the jvc ones.
would it be worth going for one or should i stick with tape for now?
ive been told by a couple of places i should stick with the tried and tested tape, but others say hard drive is the way to go

[Ekso]

I was suggesting the same to soem friends, ie betweem minidv, mini-dvd and jvc microdrives.

The drives are superb, ie 7 hrs recording, except for one thing...they are not virus resistant, and not replaceable. That eans if your harddrive went bust, you would chuck the camcorder away !!

[MarkE19]

The HDD cams are not for everybody. If you want the best possible PQ and be able to do anything more than basic editing on the PC then they are not the best option due to the high levels of compression used on the recording. However if you aren't too worried about lower PQ and just want something that is easy and convenient to use then they could be ideal for you.
No single format is right for everybody. I suggest you go out and play with a few cams and see what works best for you as they all have their pros & cons.

Mark.

[Baron Von Doom]

so would the picture quality be worse than my panasonic nvgs4b mini dv

[aka_Gilo]

I'm not sure how a virus would get onto the HDD!!

I've had a JVC MG50 for a couple of months now and am very pleased with it. Playing footage back and comparing it with footage from my old (1990) JVD mini dv camcorder I really struggle to see any difference in PQ. Yes, editing options are more limited with the MPEG2 format these HDD cams write to, but I use Womble and Ulead dvd factory 2 and have produced some dvd's I'm very pleased with.

For most leisure users (which I am) I'd say the HDD cams are well worth going for for their convenience and ease of use, though I accept for more serious film makers mini dv still rules the roost.

[aka_Gilo]

oops - that should read 2000, not 1990...!!!

[jomike]

I'm not sure how a virus would get onto the HDD!!

If I am not mistaken, when the camcorder is attached to a PC by USB it is seen as a removable drive and can be written to as well as read from, so I suppose it is possible.

[mattlittle]

Originally Posted by jomike

If I am not mistaken, when the camcorder is attached to a PC by USB it is seen as a removable drive and can be written to as well as read from, so I suppose it is possible.

Not really - viruses infect an operating system (e.g. Windows/Linux) not a hard disk. The OS in all cameras lives on a chip (firmware BIOS) and not on the disk.

You are just as likely to get a virus if you update the firmware on a tape-based camcorder. All this assumes that someone could be bothered to write a virus that would affect so few people that there was no publicity over it.