"damages may have resulted from small electrical charges during routine plug-and-play operations"... assuming the computers and camcorder(s) were OFF when the firewire cable was plugged in to the DV port, shorting the computer boards and the camcorders would not have happened.
I work in a Career Development Center where we implement a mock interview program that allows users to have their interviews digitally recorded. For the last few years we have been using two JVC Model TR-D396U and one Canon ZR960 A. Video recording was streamed instantly to six different PCs via add-on PCI firewire input cards (make and models are diverse).
All has been going well until the last few months. Main boards for all three cameras have gone bad while two of the PCI cards have gone bad. My Computing and Technology Services (CTS) Department says that the damages may have resulted from small electrical charges during routine plug-and-play operations.
We're now searching for an alternative setup and CTS suggested we change over to HDMI - that HDMI may be less likely to transmit an electrical charge causing damage to the equipment. Do you know if this is accurate? Also, do you know if HDMI can be streamed to Windows Movie Maker like our last setup via some sort of PCI or other card? We do not want a setup that requires the on-board recording and later downloading of video. We have tried borrowing video equipment from other campus offices and all of their cameras required on-board recording. They could not be streamed live to the computer.
Finally, might you suggest a camera and PCI card (or other) that would work for our setup - be it HDMI if you think that's preferred, or some other if not?
Thank you for considering my questions.
Phil

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic