I have a question about the miniSD cards...

can you record video onto the card? If so how much footage will hold on a 2gb card for example? Is the quality good?

HV20 mini SD cards are for stills only, while you're recording video or stills of the playback of the video pix. According to the HV20 manual, Canon have tested cards up to 2gb.

That gives me an idea. They should make a dual format camera. Records HDV to tape, and records the same HDV stream to an SD card. You'd have the archiving of miniDV, and the convenience of solid state... Kinda like Firestore, but built-in, and flash memory instead of a hard drive. It'll never happen though. I see everyone trying to phase out tapes completely.

I use a 2 GB card in my HV20 and it works great. Yes, it's stills only.

The HDV spec doesn't record to anything other than mini-DV tape AFAIK, but I don't see how that would keep a camera manufacturer from recording .M2T streams to an SD card, don't see that happening though.

Canon has produced AVCHD format camcorders recording to Mini DVD and Hard Disk Drive so far (the HR10 and HG10 models). I would like to see them do an SD or Mini SD flash memory version as well (or better yet, dual-recording via HDD as well as flash card).

are they going to make a hard drive version of the camera? and do you think it will be better than the tapes?

are they going to make a hard drive version of the camera? and do you think it will be better than the tapes?

Every recording medium has its pros and cons. You have to choose what works best for your needs.