should I get a blu-ray camcorder?

[FilmFiend]

I have the Panasonic HDC-SD5 and I really like it. I don't need reference quality movies so the fact that it only goes up to 1080i is fine with me (although it is 1920 x 1080, which is full hd). Looks amazing on my plasma.

The reason I got this one is that it is solid state, no moving parts. No hard drive, no discs, it just uses SDHC Flash Memory cards. 1gb is 10 minutes of 1080i and I think you can get up to 16gb cards now. I have 3 8gb cards which cost me about $25 a piece and I can record 240 minutes of HD. Its just like a digital camera, when the card is full swap in the next one. Oh yeah, I really wanted a small and light video camera, cause I hate lugging around heavy things when I'm on vacation, so that was another plus for me with this one.

I think the best thing about this camera is how easy it is to burn dvd's. Just plug it in the the computer and the software that comes with it lets you do the rest. You have 2 options, burn a standard dvd or burn a AVCHD dvd (which is blu-ray quality and will only play on blu-ray players).

The only crappy thing is since you are limited to burning on dvd's you can only have a max of 40 min on a standard dvd or 80 on a dual layer. It's not bad though considering how cheap dvd media is and you will be able to watch blu-ray quality movies on dvd's. Once blank blu-rays are cheaper, you will be able to burn on them (with a blu-ray writer of course).

http://panasonic.ca/english/audiovid...der/HDCSD5.asp

Hope this helps.