Best HDV Camcorder of 2013

16 April 2013 by Shifali Rao

HDV is a format where HD video is recorded on DV/Mini-DV cassette tape. HDV is a much older format (launched in 2003) and was meant to serve as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders. HDV is typically stored in Mini-DV tapes - which look like the small sized cassette tapes.

HDV has gained a lot of popularity primarily because it couples an affordable technology with great picture quality on a functional archiving solution (due to Mini-DV). The Mini-DV tapes are not only good for capturing video but also double up as a great archiving solution to store video over time.

Increasingly HDV is facing competition from the AVCHD format - which is a much newer higher compression-lower quality format and is designed to be primarily stored on newer storage options like Flash and Hard Disk Drive. However, HDV is still a great choice as there are not very good options in the market right now to safely archive AVCHD video stored in Flash/Hard disk drives.
The best HDV camcorders often also support the newer AVCHD formats, have great manual controls and are compact to boot.