We recently got two camcorders at work, both high end Canons. One is Stanard definition and writes to DVD, the other High definition and writes to a HDD.
Quite frankly the DVD system is a pain in the but. It is restricted in capacity to about 30mins before needing a dvd change. DVD has to be initilaised in camera then finalised at the end before it is readable. It can write to a single file in VR mode but few players read this and it needs to be converted in something like TMPGenc to mpeg 2 to be useable. The other alternative is to write in standard dvd format where you end up with a series of VOB files which need converting and stitching together before the video can be edited. The Canon software is lousy too. On the other hand the IQ is good.
The HDD camcorder is great, files can be simply offloaded for editing and an SD camcorder would be the same. The fact that the files are in AVCHD format is another can of worms though.
p.s. shouldn't this be in the camcorder forum?