I'm looking! But could someone please enlighten me on pro/cons regaring storage medias in camcorders?
I see some recommend HV20. It's still almost 1000 USD here, and I thought "tape" was obsolete now that one can get hd's instead!
The standard answer is that HDD is better for convenience, MiniDV is better for editing.
Tape will eventually be obsolete, but it is not yet. As sjspeck said, prosumer cameras almost exclusively use tape, although some have gone to solid state. Tape is not going away for a while yet, at least until the price of solid state recording media comes down.
The big plus to hard drives is that they offer the convenience of drag and drop capturing, as opposed to real time capturing associated with MiniDV tapes. All things being equal, this convenience would be very nice indeed. Real time capture is not as bad as it sounds though, as I just start the capture and go do something else until it is done. In addition, HDD's offer long recording times compared to individual tapes.
As far as cons go, hard drives are still not as reliable as tape heads, and far more expensive to repair, which is why solid state will be the likely replacement for tape in the long run. Then there is the much more contentious issue of video quality, which I address with the codecs below.
The pros for MiniDV tapes is that you can replace one when it is full. When a hard drive is full, you must have a computer available with you on which to place your video if you want to keep shooting. Also, with tapes you have an instant archive.
As has been said, MiniDV camcorders use the HDV (MPEG 2) format, whereas HDD camcorders use the AVCHD codec. MPEG 2 is an older codec and AVCHD is theoretically more efficient. AVCHD is the way of the future for consumer camcorders, and it will soon surpass HDV. However, the current consumer iteration of AVCHD is still running at a much lower bitrate than HDV, (25 mb/s for HDV compared to 13-15 mb/s for AVCHD) and though quality wise it would surpass HDV if operating at the same bitrate, they currently do not. AVCHD is also compressed at nearly double the ratio of HDV, which saves space but there are still a few bugs associated with that that are being worked out. AVCHD also uses substantially more CPU power to work with than HDV.
In addition, AVCHD has still not caught up with HDV in software support. As was pointed out by sjspeck, most NLE's now support AVCHD in some fashion, but software support has not been fully implemented in other areas, such as VFX/compositing programs like After Effects, Combustion, Shake, and others which require the use of intermediary codecs. Most consumer level users do not use such programs, but many do. Almost all experts agree that AVCHD is still a few years away from reaching its full potential.
All this stuff is being worked out, and as I said, AVCHD is the way of the future. My opinion is not meant to discourage someone from buying AVCHD, nor to insult someone who already has. It is already a fine codec (getting better all the time) with the potential to be far better than HDV. In most applications, you would not be able to tell any difference in video quality. There are some good reasons for choosing it, but with the current implementation I would still choose HDV for the type of stuff that I use it for.
The reason that I recommend the HV20 for land based videography is that it still offers the highest quality video available in a consumer level camcorder. It has external mic and headphone jacks (critical for me) and it offers true 24p. It also surpasses the HC7, it's main competition, in low light capability. The HV20 won every "Camcorder Of The Year" category in which it was eligible in Camcorderinfo.com's annual awards. They are usually pretty reliable in their info.
CamInfo Selects 2007 - News, Guides and Tips
But again, it does not have a Lanc, which is potentially a very big feature for underwater videography. So if you want an electronic housing, buy a different camcorder.
