I bought my wife a Digital8 Sony Handycam. Got it home and realized the salesman gave me the wrong one. This one has a memory stick and 290 (or something) effective pixels whatever... but the one I thought I was getting has no memory stick, but 360 effective pixels. I'm pretty sure I do want the higher resolution, but I can still download videos of my car for showing here with the USB connection, correct?

right, did it come with any photo editing software like ullead or premire? becuase raw dv format is a MASSIVE t3 killing format.

What I got was the TVR-480, what I wanted was the HC-21 (or something like that).

I haven't got a clue what software they come with.

Alright, now I can't decide what to get. If the Wal-mart dude had just given me the right one, this would hve been solved a while ago. Who'* got recommendations on a digi camcorders for less than $400?

Sony DSC W5. Don and I both have it. The video is stunning. I personally feel the digital camcorder is not long for this world.

With a big enough stick, it matters not. I can shoot GREAT vid for a long period of time, and only have a 512mb stick.

sonys and panasonic are good from what I have read.

my sister got a panasonic ~500 model and it is OUTSTANDING quality as far as sound and video performance goes.

um bill, CAMCORDERS.

but I agree. the video from the newer sony point and shoot cameras is great.

What about a Canon ZR300? It has the same effective pixels as the Sony HC21 (340), but the Canon has a card slot and lists it gets even higher effective pixels (450) on the card. Would that be worth $50 more bucks?

Not bad for $318...


and it gets fairly good reviews:

http://www.epinions.com/Canon_ZR300_...splay_~reviews

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...nDate&n=507846

http://reviews.cnet.com/Canon_ZR300/...-31263385.html

http://www.dvspot.com/reviews/canon/...ew/index.shtml

looks like the only drawback is poor audio quality and poor still photo quality.

I have a Canon ZR70 video camera. It'* a wonderful camera ... light and easy to use. And you also get Canon optics, which are top notch in my book.