Are DVD camcorders any good?

comping_cat

We are going on holiday soon, and i was thinking of buying a new camcorder which records straight onto a dvd, but ive heard some people say they arnt worth having. Has anyone got any experience of these camcorders?

Sheel

I have a Sony dvd camcorder and i'm very happy with it. I used to have a mini dv camcorder which I liked , but I personally find it so much easier to be able to record straight to dvd.

It's really easy to use and so far I haven't found any disadvantages to it.....I love it

thor

Yes dvd camcorders are very convenient but it does come at a cost. What you lose with them compared to tape based camcorders is picture quality. DVD copies as mpeg2 while tape stores the video as dv which is not as compressed. This may not matter to you as dvd is quite good anyway but DV is better.
Also it is harder to edit mpeg2 than it is to edit DV. Again if you don't intend to edit then you have nothing to worry about but I find I have to manipulate the video quite a bit in order to make it look more professional.