Camcorders : Sony HDR-SR1

This camera was perfect for me. At first I was looking at sonys dvd-505 because of the burn to dvd. Then I saw the HC3 with the High def. but i didnt like that i had to buy small dvds or tapes. When I saw this camcorder and the options that it had, it was perfect.
I have had it for about a week and a half now and I only paid 800 for it. I have only been doing a little recording but when I do it looks perfect on my 57inch sony high def tv. Also when i played it back on the tv I thaught that my lens had something on it. Turns out my tv had a spider in it and had put a spider web on the screen. I didnt see that before playedback with this camcorder.
I was thinking that with the hard drive that i would have to wait for it to be stored for like a min or two. But it is like only 2 seconds then I can record some more.
The sound quality is also very good. When I played it back on the tv it recorded the door opening and everytime i watched it i thaught someone came into my house.
The 3.5inch touch screen for me is very easy to use no problums with that. I find that all the buttons are easy for me to get to.
I have a HP media center computer m7570n and when I went to make a dvd it was really very quick with the on touch button option and with the supplied software but I dont really like the supplied software. Playback on the dvd was also very good.
I would say that if your looking for a high def. camcorder get this one you will love it. Hide Full Review

I recommend another camera to this model, the Sony HDR-HC1. This is because you can pop in the tapes anytime and watch true HD footage AND you can still download the footage to your computer!
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Once you download your footage from the HDRSR1 you will not be able to watch it in HD again until you buy a computer with a Blu-Ray HD Burner or buy a $800-$1000 external burner.

You want to talk about a memory hog?
1 hour of HD takes up minimum 30 gigs of space!

Better buy a $300 external hard drive too if you want to keep your videos...

Oh by the way even if you could burn HD better have a HD compatable DVD player;) Hide Full Review

We used the camera to film a sporting event. The camera worked fine for the first 8-10 minutes of the game and then while recording, without any cause, the hard drive had an error. This apparently wiped out the recorded game (to that point)and we still cannot access the hard drive (to format it or anything else). It was mounted on a tripod so it wasn't being bounced around or dropped. A complete disappointment given that we paid a little more "for the name". Hide Full Review

This camera is awesome, there are some spammers on here that don't have one, don't listen to them.

I just had a baby and took all my videos in HD, 1440x1080 resolution. It looks glorious on my 1080p Samsung LCD. Contrary to some reviewers here you can burn the HD videos to DVD in HD, you just need a PS3 or a Blu-ray player to decode the AVC HD codec. Actually the key is having the AVC HD codec on your computer.

Get CoreCodec AVCHD software, I think it cost $15 bucks. Then you can playback all the videos in HD. Picture motion browser is worthless, except to convert the AVCHD files to MPG, then you can do whatever you want with the videos, and they still look really good, and are in 16x9 aspect.

Once the videos are in MPG converted with Picture motion browser, you can encode them with Handbrake for your AppleTV, and iPod, PS3, or PSP.

Also PS3 is able to play AVCHD, .mts files natively on the system, just transfer them to a USB stick or a flash card.

Overall it is NOT user friendly, DO NOT buy this if you are not a techie, because you will cry with how hard it is to do anything with the videos. IF you record in HD. AVCHD is too new, and not much of anything plays it nativly... Hide Full Review

The camera seems to be awesome, Love it, but didn't stop me from taking it back. After about a week of talking to Sony tech support, and getting about nowhere.(Going through the tiers of tech support) I've decided that to spend less $$$ and having less hassle, was better... Even their software didn't work well with Win XP SP2, little lone anything else. (To new of technology, I was told, over and over) I suppose if you have LOTS of $$$ to spend on Sony "Blue Ray" and such, and to buy all of your friends the same. again,,, its awesome... I'll wait until the the technology gets here, before I need it again... Hide Full Review