My Sony Z1 does not connect anymore thru the Firewire port. And I am looking for a cheap HDV camera or deck which will allow me to connect thru the firewire port. However, I need to find an inexpensive deck or camera which will allow me both to downconvert and letterbox HDV to DV as it dumps the footage to the computer thru the Firewire port. My Z1 used to do that since it can downconvert and letterbox from the Firewire. When it was working fine, I could set it to downconvert HDV to a standard letterboxed image in DV mode.

I have a Sony FX7 camera with firewire port and downconverts HDV=>DV through firewire but only has SQUEEZE mode and does not LETTERBOX footage in SD mode when the downconversion takes place.

Any suggestions will greatly be appreciated.