Hmmm interesting. Camcorder Info is usually very thorough. I wonder what the main cons are (yes, i am too lazy to read through their thorough review)

"If you have been waiting for a camcorder that gets AVCHD right"...

Now wait for some software to get AVCHD right.

damn you Giz, I am in the market for a camcorder, before Spring Break, but this is not due out until April. Why do you tease???

Giz tease? Canon announced this bad boy almost a month ago. I immediately "bought" it at B&H. Now I have to wait until April? Kinda sucks that Camcorder Info already has a working model. At least they give it a great review. It looks like the slight downsides are proprietary hot shoe and short-ish battery life.

Stupid question (I don't know jack about vid cameras) but why would one want flash drive storage instead of a HDD? Are HDD's too unstable or power vampires?

Perhaps the idea is that flash capacity will quickly grow and drop in price so that a whole wedding and reception can be filmed (HD) on one unit?

HDD camcorders will stop recording when the camera's inertia sensors sense a drop or change on G-forces. This system protects the HDD from getting scratched if you drop it, but also makes HDD cameras useless for any kind of sport related filming.. skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing... forget it! A solid state recording system is a great step forward from tape. And canon is a great company to do it first, one of the few companies that dosen't forget the mac users that buy cameras, unlike sony.. which can bite my shinny metal ass.

@andrelix: I had a similar problem. I went to whistler last month and was gonna buy a camcorder (Canon HG10). If you really want the memories, buy a Camera now, then sell it (you'll probably take a 100-200 dollar loss for a used product). Then upgrade to this thing. I just bought a digital camera (Canon G9) and took pics and video with that which did the trick.

@Discofunk: That is not a stupid question, that is actually a very good question. I'll paint you a scenario.

Say you're on a safari trip recording footage and your battery dies? Well it's a very simple task to have extra charged batteries with you and just replace the dead battery with a working charged one. Now say you're on your second battery and your HDD gets full. What are you options? You can either clear the HDD by deleting un-wanted footage on the spot or clear the HDD by backing the HDD up to an external source and then erasing all the data on the HDD.

If you had an SDHS camera, you could just throw in another memory card. SDHC's act like tapes because once one is full, you can just pop it out and replace it with an empty one. This gives you expandable space so you don't have to be tied to large external storage source or delete footage that you have not had a chance to thoroughly review.

I trust hard drives like I trust Hilary Clinton. Aint gonna happen. they have a 100% failure rate, are greatly affected by conditions, movement, etc. miniDVD's are a pain in the ass as well. I would either go miniDV or flash storage simply because they are reliable, easily available and relatively cheap.

@Discofunk: The other advantage of flash memory over tape or HDD is also related to 'no moving parts'- tape & HDD can only record so much data in a given period of time because of the speed of the tape or of the recording head. With flash memory, you can record more data in the same time period, more data means higher resolution or faster frame rates.

A bit off-topic, (but not totally since this has to do with SD card camcorders) but has anyone used one of those Aiptek 720p camcorders? They're like $200, and I need something expendable (in the $250 or less category) for a 150-mile bike tour to mount on my handlebars. I don't want to spend anything more in case I crash abd burn, and I want SD card recording for the same reason.

On paper the Aiptek has got much better resolution that the comparable Panasonics, Canons and whatnot, but how does it rate in real life?

On the Aiptek A-HD 720p camcorders.... well, they are not really 720p. It is extrapolated. Low light quality is medioce. Picture quality is similar to a good S-VHS or Hi-8 recording.

That being said, I love mine. I have kids and nothing beats it for capturing those spontaneous moments. Battery life is OK. If I take 2 to 5 min clips once a day I can go several weeks without recharging. For more serious recording (birthday parties, Christmas, school plays) I still use my tape based Panasonic PV-GS120 which has better quality than the Aiptek overall - that is until I can afford a 3CCD based 1080p flash drive or HD based camcorder. But by then I might be takng videos of grandkids : )

@rcorrino: I think I'm going to go with the JVC HD6 in a couple months depending on whether or not they got their image stabilization situation worked out better than the HD7. If not, I'm going to get this Canon or one of those tiny Panasonics.

In the meantime, I need something that might get rained on and/or slammed into the concrete, so I'm probably going to grab an Aiptek for this documentary.

Interesting... like a week ago I started a research on which amateur camcorder to buy.
I must've spent, seriously, almost 20 hours.
Needed a mic output, HDD or possibly flash based camera.
I came with tons of models, but just today I found out about HF10... like a couple of hours ago.

For some very unique reasons, I didn't read my RSS entries from the last 4 or 5 days, and am reading them right now... to find out I could've spent far less time on my research if only I kept my usual RSS reading rhythm...

And so is life. As for the camera... I'll wait 'till it gets here and the price drops just a little bit before buying it.

vixa sounds like "wichser" which is german and means "wanker"!!!