I am very interested in the HVX and have a question about HD in general i guess.....EX- if I shoot a football game in HD on the HVX, it cant be shown on a dvd in HD right? Does it need to be converted to standard def? Is is a better image downconverted from HD or just plain SD? Formats are just so confusing to me. Does it truly look better if shown on a non HD source and how does it affect file type? any thoughts would be great, thanks!

No, you can't show on SD dvd, needs to be a HD-DVD or Blu-ray DVD. You CAN downconvert to SD & put on SD DVD.

During downconvert you'd either:
1] scale & crop sides to fit 4:3
2] scale & letterbox top & bottom to fit original 16:9 into 4:3
3] scale to fit entire 16:9 into 4:3, telling the mpeg-2 compression software and the dvd authoring software the video is "anamorphic 16:9 SD". This method stretches the video out to fit a 16:9 monitor on playback.
#3 is my favorite.

Yes, it looks better from HD.

You can author a HD DVD using red laser dye DVDs out of DVD SP 4.1.2 or later that can be played on Toshiba HD DVD set tops.

I also create SD DVDs using HVX200 footage and encode in Compressor on a Mac. Look fabulous out HDMI,

Is there someplace that can give a list of steps as to exporting and downconverting? I played with compressor a bit but it is quite confusing sometimes. So for example, I shoot some HD footage and want it on a dvd looking best quality possible. What settings and steps to I take to ensure that happens?

With Final Cut Pro (new version)....sorry

Is there someplace that can give a list of steps as to exporting and downconverting? I played with compressor a bit but it is quite confusing sometimes. So for example, I shoot some HD footage and want it on a dvd looking best quality possible. What settings and steps to I take to ensure that happens?

Export from a DVCProHD timeline QT/Current Settings/audio and video/self contained.

Take that file and drop it into the pane.

Elect the 16:9 standard definition DVD preset consistent with the length of video in minutes. Elect Dolby2 audio.

Encode.

Take the m2v video and ac3 audio files and author in DVD SP 4.x