I'm shooting with the HVX200 in my film school but we have no HD display capabilities so when we finish our editing we export to SD dvds. Does it really matter if I shoot in 720 or 1080? Once it's exported to SD isn't everything squished down to 480? If I can save some time and space on the P2 cards shooting in 720 I beleive that would be the best option at this point. Can anyone clarify this for me?

I'm shooting with the HVX200 in my film school but we have no HD display capabilities so when we finish our editing we export to SD dvds. Does it really matter if I shoot in 720 or 1080? Once it's exported to SD isn't everything squished down to 480? If I can save some time and space on the P2 cards shooting in 720 I beleive that would be the best option at this point. Can anyone clarify this for me?

I hope it's not too late. You are right. If you are delivering SD you may as well protect the storage on your P2 cards and shoot 720 23.98p.

Beware that 720 59.94p bandwidth is about the same as 1080 23.98p. This means that the storage requirements are similar.

Now, if SD is all you care about, why not shoot SD with HVX200?