Hi,

I am in the market for a home miniDV camcoder and am a little overawed by the choice! Basically I have a very limited budget (UK) and the only things I need for sure are:

Decent video quality
True 16:9 widescreen capability (not just letterboxing)
DV IN as well as out
iMovie and general mac compatibility (I would like to edit all my holiday stuff on my G4)


I don't really care about still photo taking as I already have a digital camera.

I have narrowed it down to 2 cameras at the moment:

Sony HC42E and the Canon MVX30i.

Both seem to have similar capabilities. Ordinarily I would have gone straight for the sony but my rsearch has brought up a couple of things:

When in the camera shop the sony LCD display seemed a bit grainy while the canon was superb. does this mean that the actual video recorded onto tape would be grainy with the sony?

I have also read reviews which have claimed that the sony has problems with image quality in low light.

Can anyone offer me any advice? experience? I would like to make a purchase in the next week or so and any thoughts would be greatfully received.

thanx in advance