Yes, Mini DV may have been around for a number of years now, but out of all the choices available in your price range it still gives the best picture and sound quality. The camera's can be easily connected up to computers and they work much better with all the editing software that is available. Don't be fooled by what sales staff have told you in stores about Mini DVD or Hard Disk camcorders, they use highly compressed video files, so you are starting off with a much lower picture quality right from the word go. And you have to go crazy trying to convert from one format to anther to get any of the popular video editors to accept the files.

I suppose one of the downsides is you have a lot of tapes lying about, but after you see the picture quality and how easy it is to capture, edit and make dvd's you'll soon start to forget about the negative points. I am not familiar with the model names/numbers of camcorders in Australia as they tend to be named sllightly different to what is available in Europe. You can't go wrong with JVC, Canon or my own favourite Panasonic (look for a 3CCD model if you can find one), I would tend to stay away from Sony's as they have cropped up in posts on this forum for all the wrong reasons.

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