My wife and I were out baby shopping this weekend and I decided to finally get a camcorder. I've always wanted one, but I've either been too poor or cheap to buy one. There was a clearance on Sonys at two stores, so we bought the one that was $50 cheaper, although the clerk at the other store was really informative.

Anyway, it's a Sony DCR-TRV18. Overall, it's pretty simple, which is good. I don't need any fancy functions and the camera can do analog to digital passthrough.

As for the picture quality, I can't really make out a difference between this and my brother's Hi8 camcorder. Seems like the trade off for the $200 price difference is for a smaller camera and smaller tapes. Oh yeah, and firewire transfer.

My shiny new computer is broken and in the shop right now. When I get it back, I need to get a 1394 card and I can start experimenting with firewire captures. Yay! More technical headaches... I mean joys.

Hopefully I'll have everything figured out by the time baby comes.