Hey guys, Im looking to purchase a camcorder and I need some help. I have read quite a bit about the HV20 and it sounds like a great camera. However with the current lack of options available for converting the HD tape to disc is an HD camera worth the extra money? Is there any other options that bit be better? Also to give a little more background I will be using the camera just for fun nothing professional I will also use an Imac with Imovie to edit my movies. Thanks.

Lack of options for converting HDV tape to disk ??? Any video editing software can do it, at least on a PC. I don't know about Imovie but I would be surprised if you can't.

Sergio

Hi Tim. It's worth it to have HD now. You'll appreciate the extra detail in the future. I have the HV20 and like you, have/will use it for fun. If possible and you want to skip the tape>disk step the Canon HR10 records HD direct to a standard mini-dvd. Or, you could wait a bit longer and buy an HDDVD/BD high definition disk recorder, whenever those come out for sale (again if possible). I'm not sure how old your Imac/Imovie is but with a few new plugins and more RAM you should be good to go for capturing, rendering and editing your footage to disk.

Thanks for the reply guys I guess my hesitation is getting the movie to disk i.e HD/Blu Ray burner. I just bought the Imac so Im hoping im good to go on that front.

something to consider
I've just purchased Panasonics HDC-SD5BNDL
The SD5 is a memory card format (SDHC) unit that comes bundled with a DVD burner

you can burn the AVCHD files directly to the burner (on standard DVD's) and it wll play on a Ps3 or BluRay player. you can also simply put the SD card into a Ps3 (or other compatible BR player) and it will also play - sans menus / thumbs

my issue is that I want to edit the footage without recompressing it to another format and losing the HD quality I bought the technology for ... which I'm finding is awkward without some extra software and a high end PC/Mac to do it with

we have a MacBook (2.2ghz Core 2 Duo w/ 4gb RAM) - I can do it, but I'm currently at the mercy of iMovie as I have yet to add Final Cut Pro to my Applications

if you just want the footage (no menus / added content) burning it straight to DVD may be your thing .. if not, then (like I've pondered in another thread) it's probably not the right time to get one

I believe the Holy Grail of HD camcorders is on the horizon
tapeless
lossless
easily editable
easily burnable
with good low light performance

so far, I'm not convinced it exists

someone please inform me if it does
unfortunately, the Canon HV20 (MiniDV) does not qualify
nor does the Canon HG10 (low light issues / AVCHD)
nor does the Sony SR7 (same as HG10 + crazy touch screen menu system)
nor does the Panasonic (low light is almost useless)