Does anyone have any experience with the Sony GV HD700?

I'm an amature videographer who edits family video on Pinnical Studio 9, pretty basic stuff really. I have a Cannon Optura 40, which I love for its clarity, it's versatility (with external mic, auto or manual controls, etc), and it's compact size. Cannon doesn't make this model anymore and it seems like the consumer hard drive corders on the market these days mostly lack the exteranl mics and other bells and whistles.

My question is this; am I better off springing for the $1000.00 GV HD700 or should I just buy another MiniDV camcorder to capture my footage. Are the bells and whistles like frame capture, slo mo, etc worth the extra dough?? Is it reliable?

The only feedback I can find on the usual sites is one negative about not being able to capture from the firewire or something. That sounded like operator error to me but, surprizingly, there is not too feedback online about this new toy.

Thoughts?

JT

Why not save yourself some money and just capture directly from your Canon Optura 40? After all it has a VCR playback mode and you're not going to hurt it by using it as your playback / capture deck.

Here are some reviews of this deck:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=WishList.jsp&A=details&Q=&sku=516841&is=REG#goto_itemInfo

But Chris is right: unless you're doing a lot of shuttling back and forth while capturing, marking lots on in and out points and the like, you're fine using the Canon. Even if you want to capture with a separate device, a cheap MiniDV camcorder will be cheaper and just as efficient.

Thanks guys,

I do capture from the Optura 40, but it's been in for service once already to have the drive fixed and it's only two years old.

I found a thread that claimed the it was a typical problem with the line from Cannon but that they wouldn't admit it... Anyway, I thought that I'd get something to take the strain of of the Optura.

I saw the reviews that Adam shared, thanks! It looks like a cool piece of gear and not too spendy, I was just wondering if anyone knew of any "known" problems or quirks with this unit.

JT