best camcorder for under $400???

[Kajun]

any camcorder guru's out there?? I'm looking to buy a camcorder to film fishing trips and to film my old boat motor restorations and stuff like that to be posted on youtube...nothing to technical or intensive editing...

i've narrowed it down to minidv and dvd camcorders.....the minidv would work but then you have to buy a firewire cable and a firewire computer card...but another $100 or so tacked onto the price.......

the dvd...more expensive , but you dont need that cable and card...but the disks are only 30min record time vs a 1hr minidv cassette....

what would you recommend? pros and cons?

[Kajun]

these are digital or are you talking about the harddrive models?

[BaldRob]

I have a MiniDV and love it... My comp has a firewire port, so all I had to do was buy the cable.

No experience with the DVD camcorders, so I can't comment on them.

Do your research at CNET.com... lots of good info there on all electronics!

[Stu]

I have a miniDV JVC recorder and enjoy it although I haven't downloaded anything to my PC because I still need to get a FireWire card installed on my pc.  I wanted and liked the idea of a hard drive recorder (no tapes), but I couldn't justify the expense at the time.  Of course now, a little over a year later, I see they have come down quite a bit in price.  Why doesn't everything come down in price like electronics?