hey guys, would someone please give me their 2 cents on a good shotgun mic and shoe mount system for my trv 950? i may go with the beachtek adapter, but may also decide to stay mini jack.

1- What's your budget?

2- Check out the rode videomic. DSE has a review of it over at VAAST, although unfortunately I don't see much in the way of sound quality (which is really hard to review because it's subjective sometimes).
The microphone is mini-jack plug, mounts on hot shoe, battery powered, comes with shock mount and windscreen.

Other options:
Ambient tinymike. See the dv.com review of it (registration required) I'm not sure if anyone on this board has one... although maybe you could contact the person who wrote the review for comparisons to other similar microphones.

ANother option is to get a Beachtek, a shockmount (Beyerdynamic makes a cheap one under $100, as does AT which needs a hot shoe adapter to the right thread), and a shotgun like AT897 or AT4073a (or maybe hypercardioid?... oktava mk-012/mc-012, rode nt3, AT4053a).
And then you probably want a decent windscreen on there too to avoid wind noise/rumble.