I was hoping to get some good advice for a quality HD camcorder to replace my FX1 and HC1. I currently have an FX1 which only has about 13 hours on it. This camera was purchased with the intent to produced home videos only. As you know, it is overkill for what we need it for. It's "too much" camera for us. The HC1 was purchased with the intent for my wife to carry to record the various kids' events. She has used it twice!

My question is: Is there a product from Sony now that will give me a comparable quality of the FX1 (low light, color, etc.) in a size factor of the HC1? Also, I would like it to be a "tape" recorder opposed to dvd or hdd. Thanks in advance for all your input.

Sounds like the closest to your particular needs is the HC9 (or the near identical HC7 which it supercedes.)

I bet you'll get a good price for selling those two cams of yours with that little use!

The HC9 is the current Sony/HDV tape offering - it's going to be better than the HC1 overall in image quality (not a huge amount), and it's smaller (fairly significantly) so your wife might use it more. Low light and image are going to be tough to match with a small cam in comparison to the FX1, just a matter of lens size and light gathering...

That said, the HC9 is a nice all around "family cam", with some manual controls available.

I was leaning that direction until I got hands on the SR11... had to get over my perceptions about having a HDD camera, but it's probably the BEST image quality in a small cam right now, the more I use it the more I like it... yes, editing/rendering is Computer intensive, but it shoots some of the best looking video I've seen, again it's by a small margin, but the overall image is superior to anything else in it's size class that I've used/tried. Low light is OK, about as good as you can expect with something this size. Add a small light if you really need more...

You've got a pretty nice pair of cameras with what you've got, and you'll do quite well on resale values since they are near mint, but I understand the situation - the cam that you use is the best cam for you, and for family use the small ones have some advantages.

If you can deal with the AVCHD/tapeless, the SR11 is a winner, if you must go HDV, the HC9 or the Canon HV30 are your two options (or their older silver twins the HC7 and HV20).

Thanks for the feedback! I have not looked into the HDD cams because I have the HVR-M25u for capturing to the NLE. I was hoping to still be able to use that becuase it has less then 10 hours of use. Can I still use that with the Sony and Canon cams mentioned?