Camcorders - any advice?

[emsiewill]

Having borrowed a camcorder to capture dd's first stage performance, I've decided it's something we should have bought years ago. But I don't really know where to start. I don't want to spend mega-bucks (up to £500, maybe), and I think I want a digital one, from the bit of research I've done so far. But apart from that I don't really know. I've seen a couple that look quite good and have had good reviews from "what camcorder" - a Panasonic and a JVC.
Does anyone have any suggestions/tips?

Are you near a costco and are you or a friend a member? Their prices for this type of goods are excellent. They don't have a big range but they select a few items of a given type ( eg camcorder) and then sell tham a lot cheaper than anyone else. ( a bit like the way Tesco does with tellys , printers etc.)
I bought mine there, think it is a Sharp, for about £350 and have been very happy with it.

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I bought a Panasonic NVDS33 digital camcorder (probably wildly out of date now) for £600 2 years ago and it's still doing its job well. The reason why I got it cheaply (Dixons retail price was £1000) is it was second hand but only 3 months old. I researched the camcorder I wanted and then did a search on the Loot website. Where I suppose luck came into it was the owner lived only about 10 miles away from me and also had kept the receipts to prove the age. Hope that helps.

We have a Sony Hi-8 which makes excellent films - you can get a top-of-the-range one now with a colour screen and everything for only about £450.
However Which? magazine reviewed camcorders recently and say that digital ones are the best thing to get. If I can find the one the report's in I'll tell you what they recommended, emsiewill.

We got our previous camcorder from Jessop's, it had been a display/trying-out one; it was a few months old and cost about £600 instead of over £1000 (this was over 10 years ago, they are much cheaper now!)

OK, emsiewill, I have checked out Which? , but if you have already bought one don't read this!

They have 2 recommendations for digital at around £500:

Sony DCR-TRV130E
JVC GR-DVL 150

The only problem with their recommendations in a fast-moving field like this is that sometimes that particular model has been replaced by the time the report comes out.

They also have a cheap analogue one:

JVC GR-SX22E (about £250-300)

and 2 dearer ones:

Canon G20HiE (around £400)
Sony CCD-TRV59E (around £450)

but if you look on www.unbeatable.co.uk you might get better prices.

Many thanks to everyone who has replied, particularly janh. I also thought the JVC one sounded good, BUT, when I got to Curry's - I couldn't wait to order one to be delivered - I'm like a child sometimes "I want it NOW!", the salesman talked me through the options, and I've decided that I don't need a digital one - although the idea of being able to download to my PC is nice, I can't really see that I'll ever do it, all I really want is something that I can take films with and record onto a video. So I bought an analogue Hi-8 Samsung one. It seems to do everything I want, with a few fancy extras, but not too many.
Anyway, as I say thanks for taking the time .