Well, I'm confused about this and don't what to think. There's HD and Blue-Ray. In the war over the standard, Blue-Ray won. So do you need a Blue-Ray camera to stay current in the future?

Along with the High Def stuff, there's S-Video, progressive scan, AHDV and other formats. Sheesh! What do all these mean? What you need? What is hype, and what's really necessary? If there's a 'best compromise', what is that?

Heck! I'm having trouble with media formats too. There's mini-DV (tape), hard disk, and flash memory type camcorders. I read, some time ago, that HDD cameras were slow at recording. Is this really so? I don't know how they work too, but I *think* that once you have recorded to a disk, you can insert these smaller RW-disks into your computer's CD player and transfer the mpg file(s) to your hard disk for editing. Is that the case, or do I understand this wrongly? Will these mini CDR disks play in any CD player? Or do I still need either a firewire connection or USB? And if I do, which of the two is superior? Ack!

I think I need a book -- Buying a Camcorder for Dummies. Not that I'm a dummy, but all the options available have me very confused. The only thing I knoww is that 10x zoom is adequate for my needs; I'll probably at some time need to use an external mic; and I want record at 4:3 resolution and 16:9 resolution, and preferably something in between. I don't know which camcorder to buy!

I want to make PORN - Probably Only Really Nerdy movies! Can somebody PLEASE end my confusion?

as a complete beginer reading this thread I was thinking of buying a hd cam as like most people I`m trying to buy something tats not obsolete before you get it out the box, but if I understand you I`d be spending £600 or so for the same quality I`d get for £200 and would be buying a load of editing problems to boot, so Id be better spending my £600 on a higher end sd cam is this correct.