This has not been my experience using cameras in a simillar price range. I've been using HDV for corporate and medical shoots for the past two years, and recently switched to AVCHD a few months ago.

Initially I bought the Canon HG21 to see how it would compare with the HV20/30 that I had used for small budget shoots where I have to be a one-man-army. I was quite nervous about using the camera until I brought the video into the editor, and was happily surprised at the increase in quality. Overall color balance was better. No more macro-blocking on fast moving subjects, or dimly lit subjects. Better quality audio, provided you were feeding a strong audio signal from a good pre-amp / mic combo. ( I use a Sound-Devices MixPre powering AudioTechnica 4053a hypercardiod mics, Sennhseiser G2 UHF systems using Sanken Cos-11x lavs or Tram-50 lavs if the environment is noisy )

Yes, I realize this. The main issue of macro-blocking is readily apparent when you examine video shoot with any HDV camera, and their comparison still holds up when comparing the better consumer ACVHD cams ( like the Canon HG21 ) shooting the same situation.

Yes, Panasonic prosumer cameras have better optics and imager than what you will find with any consumer camera. ( I own a Panasonic DVX100B that I use for any higher end interview work, and will replace this with a HMC150 camera in the next couple of months.)

...But the MPEG4 compression that the AVCCAM and AVCHD cameras use to store video images are essentially the same.

I've shot about 300+ DV tapes over the past three years. Mostly of this has been Fuji tapes, and Panasonic Professional DV tapes for serious work. Overall I've had very few drop-outs, but they definitely pop-up from time to time. I am also not crazy about the fragility of tape, as I've had some tapes show problems from playing them back about a dozen times or less.

Some clients want to handle the editing themselves, so yes I am happy to hand over tapes, and now I can hand over a hard-drive copy of the original video. The clients are much happier with the hard-drive copy, as they know that they start working on things right away, eliminating the hassle of transfering from tapes to hard-drive.

I never said that tape was unusable, but the world is rapidly going all-digital, and from my own experience this is a very good thing. I will still shoot tape if the client asks for it, but for any future projects I will try to avoid tape when ever possible.

I also switched from the HV20 to the HG20, but when it comes to your original question: "Is there any reason not to buy the HV30 for a MiniDV tape solution," I have to say "no." The main difference between the HV20 and HV30 is that the HV30 has 30p mode.

I had two HV20s and if it wasn't for problems with tape dropouts, I would swear by that camera - problems that are just simply part and parcel of the MiniDV format.

Problem is, that is subjective. I have rarely had actual tape drop out issues after quite a few years of shooting mini-dv, including the HV20 for almost two years now. Canon has always had spotty quality and depending on if the planets were aligned correctly or not when a camera was made seems to impact issues more than the tape format. I had the crappiest XL-1S the world ever saw, which ended up in the shop with dropouts 7 times the first year I owned it, while my GL1, which I owned for over 6 years, never had a single problem.

We have three JVC 250's and all have recorded without incident.

I guess everyone's mileage varies.

Thats like me saying that HDV and XDCAMHD are both essentially the same as they are both MPEG2. The biggest factor in blocking is compression ratio or data rate. The fact that AVCCAM has a higher data rate will lead to less blocking. This lack of blocking will not be the same as AVCHD which has more blocking.

HDV is digital, so its not as if you are getting left behind in the analog days???!

Ultimately, I think if you look higher up the professional tree you will find that most productions are shot on tape. HDCAM, Digibeta, DVCAM and HDV being the most popular formats. If tape really had as many issues as you are leading us to beleive, I think the top end of the market is where you would see a change to solid state as the work at that level is more critical but this has not happened. Tape is still a safe bet, is robust, archives well, has easier workflows and will be with us for many many years. I don't think you need to worry about the world moving off tape and being left with nothing to play your HDV or DV tapes on as one user suggested. VHS has been dead for many years and yet I can still get DV decks with VHS recorder built in and DVD recorders with VHS recorders built in. HDV is not going to just dissapear.

I think if you are only going to have one camera for your 'professional' production that HDV (tape) is the best way to go at this point in time (at the lower budget/domestic end). You can shoot HD (HDV) or SD (DV) and it just gives you more options to source income. I work in many TV Studios in the UK and most of them have the facility to play HDV or DV. If I was given a DVD with AVCHD or another disc based format, I would reject it as it is too difficult to work with.

The artifacting that we are discussing is mainly due to compression. It's not imager noise. It's not rolling shutter tearing. It's compression, and both AVCCAM and AVCHD are essentially using the same form of .h264/mpeg-4 compression to store their video streams.

The cameras that I was referring to ( the prosumer Panasonic HMC150 and the consumer Canon HG21 ), have the SAME data rate maxium data rate of 24 mbps. Same data rate, same degree of .h264/mpeg-4 compression.

Actually it is happening. It's becoming more common to see solid state and hard-drive recorders for high end broadcast and Hollywood productions, especially if the shoot involves complex FX work.

I disagree. I really think that all consumer tape based video cameras will be gone from the market in as little as 5 years. Just take a look at what's being offered right now in most of the camera and big box stores, it's mostly solid-state or HD based camcorders.

I agree that HDV tapes are going to have greater acceptance, but the world is rapidly going solid-state. I see a lot of the local TV stations here in Toronto using either the Panasonic HPX170/HPX500/HVX200 or the Sony EX-1/EX-3 for location field work.

Coming in a bit late here. But I, too, am not fully ready to declare the uselessness of tape and its demise. We have had our butts saved because of file corruption on our Focus DTE (the Firestore Hard Drive specific to the JVC GY-HD). Although we use the Focus DTE as our primary capture medium, the tape provides both a backup and our primary archive medium.

To those who may consider AVCHD format of the Vixia HG cameras somehow better, that's still debatable, but "handing over a file" to an editor is not the quick and dirty method some may suspect it is. The AVCHD transcoding when going to a NLE platform, I've found is often slower than real time meaning it's slower than transferring tape. Regardless, you must consider this in your workflow before deciding to go with AVCHD cameras.

Still, I use an HG21 and am impressed with its image for Web based delivery. I still haven't optimized for use for DVD delivery. I suspect that for DVD, I should be shooting exclusively in 24P regardless of the "look" I'm pursuing. I keep hearing I will get less stuttering. Tests continue.

Final word: Consider all the aspects of workflow from capture to edit to archive before praising or poo-pooing a capture medium.

Dave