Originally Posted by dingo
Help me with the media folks. It looks like some of these use tapes and other use memory chips. Which is the more stable and most cost effective? If I want to get four hours of video, how many of each media types would I need to buy/use assuming I can't download the files?
There are at the moment 6 types of media:
1) MiniDV; the most used media, nice and cheap and reliable tape system
2) MicroDV; not used much, except for 3 or 4 Sony models, expensive tapes
3) Mini DVD; become more common, expensive media, limited storage advantage is that they are playable on a regular DVD player
4) Digital8 / Hi8; older system, mainly used in old/cheap cameras
5) VHS-C; Compact VS tapes, hardly ever used any more except for those massive cameras places like Walmart sells
6) Solid state/Flash memory cameras; very recent technology, expensive and still pretty low quality compared to systems like MiniDV.