With the increased distribution of HD and HD-capable TVs, the demand for HD creation has also increased. Doesn't your standard definition MiniDV camcorder look absolutely horrible on your spanking-new, full HD LCD TV? At least psychologically, it will. You can get HD camcorders in all shapes and sizes; vertical, hard disk, tape, flash memory, DVD, hybrids. But this one, the HG 10, prefers to stick to convention,
Look around the camera, and nothing will strike you as extraordinary. It's a very conventional shape and design, with all the buttons in the right places. In front is the awesome Canon HD video lens, an LED photo light, a xenon flash for still photos and the microphone on top of the lens. On top is the accessory shoe, strangely hidden under an untethered cover. Keep it open and you're likely to lose it. The zoom rocker is quite large and comfortable to use, but no so some of the other buttons (like the one used to switch from photo to video). The 40GB hard drive holds almost 6 hours of footage at the highest quality setting (15 M/bits per second).

Lower the quality, and you'll be able to fit in a maximum of about 15 hours of high def footage. While this kind of storage is useful, I doubt if many people will actually utilize it. It helps that each clip shows up as a separate thumbnail, so that you can play a clip you want directly, without rewinding or forwarding tape. This is infact, the biggest advantage of a hard disk camcorder over its tape-toting brethren. Incidentally, both these advantages are also available with flash-based camcorders. A drop sensor for the hard drive is included, which presumably parks the hard drive head if it detects a fall. As far as video quality is concerned, you'll find little fault with the HG 10. At least to eyes used to 480 lines of resolution, the 1080 lines of ultra sharp and vivid pixels will look simply amazing, especially coming from a small, handheld device. Transferring videos and photos is a cinch, thanks to the USB 2.0 port. You can start editing footage and burning home movies to DVD immediately with the supplied Ulead software bundle.

There are a lot of modes and manual controls to play with, including white balance, video effects and exposure. The viewfinder is extensible and offers dioptre adjustment too, which is a nice touch.
There were a few things I didn't like though. The menu system is quite confusing. You have to use a combination of the buttons under the LCD, the 5-way d-pad and the scroll dial placed around the d-pad. It's hard to press one of the buttons without accidentally touching the dial. Secondly, in order to squeeze in more video into the hard disk, the HG 10 uses the AVCHD codec, which is more compressed as compared to the HDV codec used in the Canon HV30. Finally, the price of Rs 90k is a big blow. I couldn't fathom why the camcorder is priced so high, especially considering that it's available in US markets for as low as Rs 32k! If you're really interested in the best video quality you can get, I would suggest opting for Canon's HV30. Sure, it is a MiniDV camcorder and transferring video is not as easy as connecting a USB cable. But consider- ing that it's priced at Rs 75k and offers all the same features and a lower compression HDV codec, it takes the lead easily. Finally, if you only take short bursts of video (upto 41 minutes at a time), don't need full HD and prefer to ditch the hard drive system completely, you can go for one of the flash memory based camcorders like the Samsung VP-MHX10A for Rs 35,000.