We are looking for a present for a 70 year old (yeah you get it-- not too many buttons -- ease of use etc), we have £300 ish to spend but just want a straight forward machine and all he is going to do is use it on holiday or take footage of the kids at football and then put it onto dvd at home, there is little or no chance of him connecting to a pc. We would have considered a hdd but at £350 for the bottom of the range and with him not needing perhaps such state of the art technology we are wondering what we might get for our money in other formats? Just any easy to use, easy to transfer onto dvd, good quality picture machine.

Ok, try this one. I think the DVD camcorder may be the best for him but am i correct in thinking recording length is compromised?

[senu]

I wonder if this thread is any good to you?

Originally Posted by paulabradley

....but am i correct in thinking recording length is compromised?

No... 20 min at very best quality, more at standard quality ( Standard depends on which DVD camcorder but imagine 40 mins is an average). He ( she?) may not wish to record more than that at a time anyway

Another sugestion would be an HDD camcorder ( within your budget) or even miniDV( definitely within your budget) with him (her) playing the footage on HDD or tapes direct to TV ( perhaps via the front AV input) from camcorder and then the occasional "nice" son , daughter or grandchild transfering his footage to DVD on a settop DVD recorder( or PC) for him periodically.

Im not sure how well these devices ( both HDD and DVD camcorder) which encode video to mpeg " on the fly" handle fast moving action like football but for sedate holidays Im sure they are quite capable.

I guess current users are better able to comment