Thanks for the candid response. That's why I asked.

Based on the review at the site you mentioned, those two seemed like the best. I'm certainly open to other suggestions, though. Is there a better review site to look at? Cnet seemed to like both of those models too. ~8 out of 10 ratings.

I am probably going to mostly use it casually at home, for sports, and for when I travel. Some of it will be indoors. I probably want something that can shoot in high definition since that's going to be the standard. I need at least 10X optical zoom. It's my understanding the HD and DVD models aren't quite there yet and that I need to find a model that writes to tape. Is that incorrect? Reasonably small and light weight are important. I don't need a professional model, but I would like to be able to do some controls manually when I feel like it.

I'll then probably use the footage to make dvds with tmpEng or some similar software.