What is a good camcorder?

What is a good camcorder that has the following things?

• What is a good camcorder that has the following things: - Minimum of 10x optical zoom - Great playback on PC and TV quality (And if HD videos can play on a standard box television and standard box-like computer, then preferably HD quality) - HDD or SD Card camcorder - Doesn't take up too much space on the computer - Compatible with Windows Movie Maker Please also, unless you don't know, mention where you can buy this camera.

• Answer:

  Since Microsoft MovieMaker can't deal with HDV or AVCHD, that drops all 1080i or 1080p camcorders off the list. As well, Panasonic and JVC fall off the list because they use a ".mod" file type for the highly compressed MPEG2 video they store. Since you specified HDD or SD cards, that drops MiniDV tape (which provides best available video quality - but it is your decision) and DVD based (which provide the worst available video - good you dropped these). Since you specified SD memory, that drops some Sony cams off the list (they use Memory Sticks). That leaves Canon FS series (SD) http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=173 Sony (standard def HDD) http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=3555 and maybe Samsung (which I would not bother with, so no link - sorry). Since you didn't tell us your budget, you get to finish narrowing it down. Shop Amazon.com, bhphotovideo, adorama, frys... if the price looks too good to be true, it probably is - don't get sucked into price scams. "Doesn't take too much room on the computer" is up to you. If you want high quality video, you cannot compress it very much. If you want small space, either the video is very short or you compress it a lot - you cannot have high compression, high quality, long video clip length and expect it to take up a small space on the computer - It does not work that way.