Camcorder with hard drive????????-HELP~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Whoooosh]

Has anyone got one and can you explain what it means?

Are they better than ones without?

Need to know quite quickly as plan to buy today.

Please?

In principle they are a good idea because you don't need any tapes or DVDs to record onto, it's all just stored in the machine, and in a format that's reasonably future proof. Periodically you fill the hard disk and then want to transfer what you recorded - probably onto a DVD

The bad news is that the format you're storing the film in is compressed to save space, and hence lower quality then when recorded on tape. Also, (I think because of the compression) it's harder to do any editing of material recorded on one of these (or a DVD camcorder) as compared to tape.

I was planning to buy one myself as a first camcorder, but was put off by reviews suggesting that the quality of the recording is still poor (although it's certainly only a matter of time before this is solved). As a result, I just bought a mini DV (tape) camcorder.

Thanks so much Jillybaby