Relative importace of sensors vs format

Your shooting requirements; audio connectivity into the camcorder; what you will use to edit; your video capture and editing skill... and lots more.

I know people who could shoot awesome footage using the lowest-end camera available... and I know people who own expensive cameras who probably should not be shooting video.

But back to imaging... if the surface area of the single chip (CCD or CMOS) is about the same as the 3 chip (CCD or CMOS ) camcorder, then the video quality will likely be similar. (So, yes, size DOES matter.)

Since you already know about compression and the various issues that may present themselves in a particular storage format, and you also know that miniDV tape allows for the least compression (hence best available quality), then the leap you need to make is understanding that the imaging limitation will be imposed at the compression level - which is past the imaging chips in the capture process. Consider this: The same lens and imaging chips can be built into a miniDVD camcorder - and the compression to fit video onto the miniDVD is HUGE... so, the quality of the video when uncompressed and dropped onto your computer for editing is terrible. The lens and the imaging chips were the same as those in the miniDV tape or Hard drive based camcorder... it was the downstream compression step onto the media that kills it.

Of course... this is merely my opinion and I would need to check the other specs of whatever cameras you are evaluating before coming to a purchase decision - but at this moment, I would probably be looking at the miniDV tape based machine over a hard drive based machine - regardless of the chip count (presuming the single CCD and the 3 CCD total area are approximately equal).