Fact: MiniDV tape continues to provide the best available video quality and will be aroud aas long as that quality differential remains and memory cards are expensive for equivalent record time..
My opinion:
HDD (Hard drive based camcorders will be aroud for a bit, but will go away in favor of memory card units like the CX7. Memory card and HDD quality are the same and take a back seat to miniDV tape for now.
I have been looking for a Camcorder for a while now and it sure has been a pain. I dont have thousands to spend but I dont want a piece of junk either. It seems I have kind of narrowed my search down to 3 (Panasonic SDR-H18, Pan PV-GS320 or Sony HDR-CX7). The PV-GS320 sounds like a great camera but I am not quite sure if the MiniDV is going to give me any problems (saving footage-vista operating system)and I am not quite sure it is going to work that well in low light levels. It sounds like hard drive is the way of the future but if the MiniDV works I'm ok with it. I would like a good optical zoom too and I am concerned about recording in low light levels (dont want too much grain). I am a bit overwhelmed. There are a lot of good choices out there and there are a lot of "bad" choices. Am I going in the right direction? Haved I missed anything?

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