HD Video Camera help

[Gator]

I'm about to go on another trip to WDW in January. Since the last trip, I've upgraded to an HD TV, and my old home videos of WDW just don't seem to cut it. Plus, my old camera's battery can't hold a charge for more than 45 minutes. So instead of getting a new battery, I figured I'd just get a new HD camera.

I'm looking in the range of $400-$600. Anybody have any suggestions?

[DizneyRox]

That's a nice budget for a consumer level camcorder. Personally, I like tape, but I think the medium is on it's last legs. I've been really happy with my Canon. I would get another one is a second.

I would squirrel away a bit of that money for:

1. Extra battery
2. Blu-ray burner and possibly computer upgrades.

BluRay is nice for file backups as well as burning for viewing on HDTV. I just picked one up and it's fantastic, ESPECIALLY for making backups of your BluRay disks.

I would say that probably most people don't have the computing power necessary to playback HD video well. It really takes a lot of power to play 1080p, which is why I mention PC upgrades.

HD videography is a whole new world, I'm just now getting used to the widescreen format. I still put a lot of my work to standard definition formats, the HD is nice as it allows me to compensate for camera shake, etc, even allows me to simulate different views by zooming into areas of the video (think digital zoom). One of these days I'll have to leave that crutch and go full on HD all the way, but too many people still can't view HD video.

[Ruprect]

We have a Sanyo Xacti HD Camcorder and couldn't be happier so far. IIRC it was reasonably priced and doesn't use tapes (big plus for me since I had two MiniDV camcorders have problems).

[c&d]

We have a Canon also and have been really happy with it. It's a Vixia and it's takes really nice videos and it's easy to use.