I am interested in purchasing my first camcorder for my family and I want one with Hi Definition 1080I that uses a hard drive and easy to use.

Before I offer suggestions on an HD camera, I'm going to try and talk you out of it, so bear with me. Reason being, is that I just don't think HD is ready for the mainstream consumer because of the lack of market saturation of HD. As such, it's purely the domain of professionals and early adopters who don't mind investing a good deal of cash to be the first ones to use the latest.

That's changing mind you. As we head towards 2009 (the year that Uncle Sam has mandated for moving television broadcast into the HD spectrum), prices have dropped dramatically this year on HD televisions (from $8K to just over $1K), but let's not forget that you'd also need an HD capable editing software, HD DVD burner, HD dvd player, etc. There's also the silly Blue Ray/HDDVD format war that's been waging, forcing concent providers and users to choose sides. Thankfully, as more multiformat DVD players/burners come on the market, this will be less of an issue.

And you need to unlearn and relearn how to shoot HD. And how many friends and family are actually investing in HD at the moment? Sharing HD DVDs with them will be a problem. So, for at least the next 6 months, HD is still out of reach for the mainstream. But it won't be for long.

And in buying an HD camera, you have to also upgrade to an HDTV, HD DVD player, HD DVD burner and use expensive HD DVD media. And since there's yet another petty and rediculous format war going on between HD DVD and Blue Ray, which one do you get? And that also has an issue with what others have. All this, and the fact that HD is still the purvue of the early adopter has prices very expensive and it all adds up.

So, it's up to you if you want to get in on the ground floor of HD, or wait until the tipping point has been reached with prices, availability, and market saturation. My bet is you'll be ready when you're looking to buy your NEXT camcorder, not this one.

Now that I've tried to talk you out of it, you may be saying "who is this nutjob? Can't he just give me a recommendation?" Well, sure I can.

The Canon HV20 is a good choice. 1080i. 24p for that filmlook quality. Optical Image Stabilization, even 16:9 widescreen. The HV20 also features a 3-megapixel still camera and 2.7-inch widescreen LCD.

But here's the thing. It's miniDV. Trust me, this is still a better way to go. Reason being is that hard drive based camcorders, while convenient, encode their footage in MPEG2 or the proprietary AVCHD format, which video editors are just now starting to offer plugins for to handle.

So, if you want to edit your footage, take out wasted scenes, add titles and music, etc., you're taking a hit in video quality by shooting native with a hard drive camera in MPEG2. And even though you're doing it in HD, the MPEG 2 is still a compressed format. So once you're finally ready to burn to DVD, you end up recompressing that compressed footage.

Oppositely, miniDV cameras like the HV20 are much more robust and a much better in format because once you've captured, edited and then burned to DVD, you aren't recompressing already compressed footage, and can choose the best encoding format for you.

But with hard drive based footage, it's far less convenient for those of us who wish to edit our videos as a hobby.

However, you may simply be driven by convenience of shooting it and watching it. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that.

You could look at the SONY HDR-SR1. It meets your requirements, and hovers around, but slightly above, your budget. If you're a MAC user, however, you may run into compatibility problems.

Which brings me back to the HV20.