Sony Hdr Sr1 Avchd 30 Gb Hd Hard Drive Camcorder By shulockabaulugy on Sep 24, 2007 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

Picture and sound qualities are everything I wanted in an Hi Def camcorder. I've played video back on my 48" Bravia LCD widescreen with quality comparable (and better in some cases) to the picture from the Hi Def broadcasts via Dish Network. I like the menu (more user friendly than the DV cameras I've previously owned) and the ability to move through the menus using the touch-screen feature is very handy.

The biggest drawback for many people will be the fact that a purchase of the camera alone will not be the end of the equipment upgrades needed to make the system complete. Unless you have a high-high end computer with a 3 GhZ processor, 1MB of RAM, a decent video card, and most importantly, lots of storage space.

Think of it this way (or sell it to your significant other by pointing out), a DV tape stores about 90 minutes of video so you can think of this camera as holding the equivalent of 2 DV tapes at highest quality. One 500 Gig hard-drive can hold the equivalent of 33 or more DV tapes. At $5 per tape, you could spend up to $165 for a new external hard-drive and come out even (and surprisingly, they come for less than that these days).

Don't let the above distract you from the excellent qualities of this camera. I'm not ever going to be able to go back to my DV tape Lo-Def camcorders again.