Re: Time for a new camcorder
I and my brother have had great experiences with Sony camcorders. Their performance is outstanding and we have never had to have one serviced, even after 8 years of use.
Last year my sister and parents bought Sony mini-dv camcorders. They are great, fantastic color and contrast, outstanding Carl Zeiss lens, and have never had one eat a tape. They paid over $400 for their camcorders.
This Christmas I just bought my wife the Sony DCR-HC38 Mini DV Camcorder, 40x Optical/2,000x Digital Zoom, Color Viewfinder, 2.5" Touch Panel LCD Screen, for about $270. The prices are really dropping! Firewire (1394) connection lets you load video into you computer for editing with ease. It is so small it fits in my wife's purse, so light it is a pleasure to use.
I was looking at internal hard drive camcorders, but they still compress the image, so you don't get the high quality DV image to edit.
This is where I bought mine:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/475500-REG/Sony_DCRHC38_DCR_HC38_Mini_DV_Camcorder.html