I can't for the life of me decide. I am stuck between buying a secondary monitor for editing OR a miniDV cam to use as a deck (avoiding using the heads on my expensive cams). I need both. The only thing keeping me from ordering the cam is the fact that most of my new stuff will be HDV and the (deck)cam doesn't do HDV -BUT i do have a LOT of regular DV tapes i need to capture....

So, new monitor or new camera (deck)>>>>>>

Marco - what's your budget? If all you need is a deck for SD, I've got a Japanese Panasonic with a failed CCD... no good as a cam unless you send to Japan to have fixed under warranty (there was a recall on this model) but tape transport and firewire are absolutely fine...

I think I'd vote for the second monitor - I had three for a while but 2x24" is livable, barely. Increased productivity might even pay for the HD ingest deck cam!

Thanks Dave! My wife made the mistake last night of saying the word "both" heheh

Do you mean a secondary computer monitor or an NTSC monitor?

If you've only got one computer monitor, I'd go for that. Few things increase your productivity more than a second monitor.

If you're talking about an NTSC monitor. Tough call. If you do broadcast work where color is critical, you gotta have one.

For the camera-as-deck. Tough call. I use a Canon HV10 for an HDV deck (about $600 used), but I often find I used my nicer camera to capture because it just works better with my NLE. I tend to think people worry too much about using their nicer cameras as decks. Unless you are really putting that thing through the ringer (lots of shuttling, batching), it will probably be fine for years. The cost of replacing the heads is probably comparable to the cost of decent camera-as-deck, unless of course you're planning to get a really cheap camera-as-deck for just a couple of hundred bucks.

Monitor, secondary PC monitor for editing. PURCHASED :-p Now pondering the deck, but you're right -I don't use the HDV cam THAT much to go through footage... hmmmmm

I had to get an expensive camera firewire repair to recover HDV footage. My new AVCHD camera has a REMOVEABLE memory card which can be read in a $10 card reader. It's the only way for me.

Got both LOL