SAN JOSE, Calif. — Woody White, producer of "Hayden's T-Ball Game" and "Haley Catherine's Princess Birthday," couldn't be more proud of his videography.
He's archiving priceless family memories with the most convenient camcorder he's ever used.
"I just love it," the attorney and married father of two from Wilmington, N.C., said of his DVD camcorder. "You just pop it out of your camera, put it in any DVD player, and there's no wires involved."
White bought it last year, helping to make DVD camcorders the fastest-growing format in camcorder history. But new, lightweight tapeless models are now giving consumers more choices than ever. With hard-disk drives and flash memory, they're vying for attention with camcorders using the popular DVD format or the tried-and-true MiniDV, which records digitally to compact tapes.
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Each format has its benefits and drawbacks, and features vary widely among models, making the shopping experience a complex research project.
Choosing a camcorder will depend on how much you're willing to spend, how you intend to use it, and what video quality you require. The product also should feel right to the user.
"If you can't hold it comfortably, it'll be impossible for you to shoot good video," said Robin Liss, editor in chief and founder of CamcorderInfo.com.
As the old kid on the block, the MiniDV camcorder offers some of the best bargains, with some models priced at less than $300. The tapes cost about $8 for a three-pack, and each cassette can store 60 minutes of video.
DVD camcorders, which offer the convenience of straight recording to a DVD — without the need for any special cables for playback on a TV — are priced at $450 or more. Blank mini-DVD discs cost $15 for a 10-pack and hold 20 to 30 minutes of video, depending on the recording mode.
You'll pay $600 to $1,000 for hard-drive models that offer easy, instant access to any part of the video right on the camcorders themselves, without rewinding — similar to how digital still cameras offer quick photo reviewing capabilities.
Hard-drive camcorders also offer the most capacity, with 30-gigabyte models that can store seven hours of video at the highest-quality settings, and twice that in standard mode.
Camcorders that use flash memory have some of the same benefits as hard-drive models and are typically the most pocketable. Prices start around $200, but storage capacity is limited. Models commonly offer 512 megabytes of built-in flash memory, which holds about 30 minutes of video, or a slot for removable SD cards, of which the biggest available is 2 gigabytes and costs about $80 if bought separately.
The tapeless models typically require users to transfer video footage to a computer to free up recording space.
Analysts expect MiniDV's long dominance to decline over the next few years as major brands such as Sony, Canon, Panasonic and JVC focus on newer technologies.
Sony, the market leader, accounted for more than 40 percent of the 12.5 million camcorders shipped worldwide last year, according to the IDC market-research firm. Sony now has five DVD models, up from three last year.
Panasonic similarly has beefed up its DVD camcorder lineup, but it also has introduced a petite flash-memory camcorder. And JVC, the first major manufacturer to bring hard drives to camcorders in 2004, is betting on that format and ignoring the DVD camcorder segment altogether.
Chris Chute, an IDC analyst, forecasts that MiniDV will represent 31 percent of the market in 2009, down from 54 percent in 2005. DVD camcorders, which first appeared in 2001, should climb to a 27 percent share by 2009, up from 20 percent in 2005.