advice on Sanyo Xacti HD2

[dmx005]

Has anyone come accross this camcorder? Im looking for tapeless/HDD camcorder and found this for £299.00 (down from £449) which looks like the only HD camcorder for under £400!

Didnt get a great review on Cnet but Id prefer to hear some honest opinions on here if possible..

My budget is a max £300 (like a few others on here Ive noticed) so I realise Im kinda limited..

[rhubarbe]

Believe the review. I take it that it said excellent 720p video in good light, awful in lowlight and with poor image stabilisation.

[dmx005]

Originally Posted by rhubarbe

Believe the review. I take it that it said excellent 720p video in good light, awful in lowlight and with poor image stabilisation.

thats exactly what it said.. looks like its back to the drawing board! Might just wait until the January sales!

[rhubarbe]

Panasonoc HDC-SD5 is your best bet for a card based cam and the Canon HG10 is the current flavour of the month for HDD, but both of these shoot in 1080i format rather than the more limited 720 of the Xacti (and others like it). They are way over your budget, too.

I started off looking at a Xacti, bought an SD7 (import upright version of SD5), and now I use a Canon HV10, which is tape based, just because it is better.

You can often get ex-display or refurbished HV10s from eBay at just over £300.

'Tis a real camcorder, sir.

[gshocker30]

I brought the Sanyo, and I wonder if I have made a mistake, though the jury is still out until I have done some editing and burnt to DVD.
I like the size, the features are OK, the sound is excellent. HMI is not a good a Cannon device (my choice for best HMI on cameras).

It came with Adobe premier elements 3, which frankly speaking is useless. it cant handle the MP4 video at all. I downloaded a trial sample of Vagas studio and that seems better so far.
The laptop im using is a thinkpad, 1024Mb RAM, dual core centrino 1.83 GHZ, so software is the key to getting the best out of this.
As I say, the jury is still out until I see the first DVD.
Rob.