Is the internal HD in the HF10...
 

..worth the extra $300.USD? Two, cl.6, 8GB SD cards are about $80. at Tiger Direct... But, would the transfer rate from HD to iMac be faster with a card reader or the internal HD? The color is different .. but that seems the only obvious diff. Any thoughts?

It's actually flash memory in the HF10, not a HDD.

Correct you are Justin. (I wasn't paying attention..) So, Flash internal or Flash-in-a-card may be a wash. There's an interesting read on Flash memory here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

I thought I caught the 100 short: the HF10 has a remote control device (that sealed the deal for me over the Xacti) .. but when I printed out the what's in the box for both; the boxes contained duplicate contents, except for the internal memory and black paint.

Obviously, the extra cost does not directly justify the amount of extra memory. Personally, the only reason I would spend that much extra would be if it gave you some valuable added capability. For example, if the HF10 can seamlessly record a single large clip across both the internal and removable memory, then you could get much longer continuous recording if that was useful to you. But I don't know if the HF10 can do that. I still haven't even been able to find one yet in a local store to look at :(

On a similar note, I was shopping around in local stores this weekend (places like Circuit City, etc.) and noticed that SR11's are harder to find than SR12's. It seems like demand is favoring the smaller 60GB HD over the $200 more expensive 120GB.

Jim, I settled on the HF100. The internal memory offered me no real advantage and I've been "scarfing up" on open package special of a Sandisk 8GB card with reader for $60, and on sale $27 PNY 4GB (both class 4).

A lot of what I do involves short projects so until 16GB cards come down some more I don't mind the lower capacity.

I like the option.

Just to clarify, no it can't do that.

I had to do an expensive repair to an HDV camera to repair the firewire to salvage tapes I had already shot. I am now a BIG fan of removeable media that does not rely on the health of the camera. SD cards in a cheap reader do that for me.

Just make sure that the card reader is compatible with SDHC. Older card readers that accept SD cards may not be able to read or recognize SDHC even though the card fits into the slot.

Just as a side note to this, some readers, such as some versions of Sandisk Imagemates that were not able to read SDHC cards originally, have firmware updates available that add this ability. So, check for firmware updates if you have a reader that's only a year or two old but doesn't seem to read SDHC.

And yes, I know that feeling about tapes. I have an older Hi-8 camcorder where the power supply has gone bad and I can no longer access my older Hi-8 tapes. Since it's a power supply I'll probably be able to fix it but if it were an internal drive problem I might have been stuck having to buy an old camcorder on Ebay or something just to play those tapes. I guess it would be good to digitize them all at some point ;-)