I've been downconverting A1 HDV footage in camera (HV10) to DV for editing to SD DVDs for now and keeping everything for possible uprez later.

But is it better to downconvert with a card like a Kona via component?

thanks for any help.

I think it is "six of one, a half dozen of the other" as far as capturing plain DV. The kona card will give you options like Uncompressed 8 bit SD or DVCPRO50 or PhotoJpeg that you can't get through firewire. If all you do is a standard edit without a lot of compositing then this is not particularly helpful.