Camcorder Advice?

[kellia]

Grrrr, our camcorder died right before the kids' Christmas program yesterday! I'd like to get one before Christmas, but don't want to just run out and not research. Ours was about 8 years old, so have no idea what the best ones are now. Any suggestions or has anyone seen any good buys? Hard drive, mini disks, etc, any pros/cons?? Would like something with decent "zoom" quality since we do try to get a lot of the kids programs at school, would also like a "smaller" one so hopefully we'll use it more.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[merekc]

I don't know that this is much help, but I was recently with my dad when he purchased a camcorder. It seemed to me that the majority of ones are now hard drives instead of any kind of disk/CD.

And if your camcorder was 8 years old, everything on the market currently blows yours away. I say that not to be mean, but my 7 year old camcorder is a dinosaur next to everything we looked at.

Anything you buy is probably going to seem like an upgrade.

 

[solfan68]

We've got a Mini DV based camcorder, but even that's a few years old now. We do like it a lot. I do see where they still sell Mini DV cams over at Amazon. As PP mentioned, seems like a lot of it is going towards totally digital media... onboard hard drive or SD cards(as are often used in digital cameras). Best of luck in your search.