NEED HELP, Buying a new Camcorder??

[mrfuzzyfelts]

Im after a camcorder for the mrs, dont need to be nothing special really.

Dont want a c**p one tho! Its only of home vids of the little one due in feb!! (not me n the mrs before someone says anything)

Do i go for a DVD recorder one or one with a HDD??? Advantages etc or each??

Any help will be great!

Can only spend £300 - £350 really

Anything u can recomend from currys? as its easy to get from there

Cheers

[mrfuzzyfelts]

This HDD any good???

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...fm=9&sm=1&tm=0


or is a DVD one ok???


http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ory_oid=-31057


p.s. i aint got a clue about these atall!!!!!!!!

[redsox_mark]

If you stick with the main brands there aren't really any c**p camcorders... though some produce better quality for the money than others, and there is some differences in the features they have.

First I have to be boring and repeat what I've said many times - that in terms of quality you'll get the most for the money with a DV (tape) model, like the Canon MVX450/MVX460, or Panasonic GS180/GS300, which are in your price range.

But if you don't want tape...

DVD and HDD cams use the same compression. The main advantage of DVD is you can shoot, finalise the disc in the camcorder, and pop it into a DVD player. No need to connect to a PC or anything. But the downside is you can only fit 20-30 mins on a disc. With HDD you can shoot for several hours (amount of hours depends on HDD size and quality setting used). But you will need to connect it to a PC to burn DVDs (or there are some standalone burners).

For the models you mentioned - the Panasonic VDRD100B DVD one is a bit better than the JVC GZ-MG21 HDD model in terms of picture quality.

[mrfuzzyfelts]

Thanks ALOT for your time,

Well i use PC's all day everyday so id be happy to have a HDD one so that i can edit on my PC and burn what i want to disk with a tidy program.

Do they both use the same format HDD and DVD ones?? so can i basically copy from the DVD to PC the same and edit it?

As maybe i should go for a good DVD one, as dvds are so cheap it doesnt really matter swapping them etc!

Thanks for any help!!!!

[redsox_mark]

Both DVD recorders and HDD recorders record to MPEG2 - the compression format used for DVDs.

With a DVD recorder, when you put the disc in a PC, the files will be in the format used for DVD (.VOB files). These can be burned on to a full sized DVD, or edited with video editing software and then a DVD created.

With HDD, it isn't .VOB files... it is .MOD, but again these are just MPEG. Some software will handle the .MOD files directly, with others you need to rename the files.

[mrfuzzyfelts]

Ok, THANKS VERY MUCH MARK!!!

Think ill go with this one then

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ory_oid=-31057

Im sure it will be ok for what i want