Question about minitape vs hard drive?

[Joseph Zorzin]

Originally Posted by John Waterman

Appreciate your take on things Michael.

Something I've frequently wondered about is: are cam manufacturers (such as Canon etc) deliberately holding back on advanced features such as solid-state storage, so as to stretch out the gravy train. When I look at the dozens of cam models under one brand I see what appears to be deliberate redundancy and thus huge waste.

Then again, what do I know.

John, so- a month later, did you buy the tape or hard drive cam? I'm still pondering between an HV-20 vs. HG-10. So far it looks like the tape cam only due to the fact that I don't know if my PC can handle the needs of a AVCHD editing program- having only a core duo 2.13 GHz system (also, with 2 gigs of RAM, a gorgeous 24" DELL flatscreen and a nVidea 7900 GS card with 256 megs onboard and a brand new 500 gig hard drive. I think all but the CPU is adequate.)

[John Waterman]

Hi Joseph,

I finally decided on the HV20. The quality is fantastic and I don't have to use a small supercomputer to edit AVCHD. I would have preferred solid-state memory, with no tape mechanism or HDD to stuff up but maybe that's still a few years off for an economic product.

I found that one doesn't have to use the more expensive Sony HD miniDV tapes with the HV20. Panasonic tapes, such as the DVM63SQ, work fine at less than half the cost per tape.

You could always plug in a quad-core chip to boost your system. I hear they're dropping in price :)

John