How Much Better is DTD?
 

I might purchase an FS4 when I buy my new XH A1. Is the video quality better from a Direct-to-Disk device than a standard Mini DV tape?

In theory it should be identical, since the digital data is the same no matter how it's recorded. In practice recording to tape may be subject to dropouts during recording and/or playback, while hard drives are subject to failure in other ways. The best thing you can do is record simultaneously to both minidV tape AND a hard drive recorder, then you get the advantages of both plus redundant recording. Doing this has saved my butt at least once due to problems with a tape, while having the tapes is a convenient backup when you're erasing data on your HDD.

I would always record to both. I'm just trying to decide if its worth spending 800+ dollars on one.

I would have said that's pricey until the time my Firestore saved me on a project, which was worth every penny. My main complaint now is that the standard battery doesn't seem to last as long as advertised, so you really need the bigger battery for long continuous events (like a mitzvah ceremony).

My main worry with FS is that it doesn't seem to support HDV format, but uses Quick Time HDV instead, or am I missing something here? I know, QT is just a way to package a stream, but is there really a re-encoding going on? Also, I see that FS-4 HD doesn't seem to support Canon A1 24f mode.

i'm not sure this would work, but couldn't you plug somthing like this http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item...re_Reader.aspx into the firewire port on the camera with several equally as fast compact flash cards. if you could, it would be great because you wouldn't always have to deal with tapes, and there wouldn't be the risk of hard drive failure. Again, i'm not sure it would work, but it would be great if it did.

That would be nice, and similar to the Panasonic HD camcorder that records onto PD (solid-state) cards. Except, I am not sure there are any CF or CF II cards rated to support 25Mbs sustained data rate. If there were, the price is still pretty high - 8G CF cards go for around $200...

sandisk's new extreme fours run at 40 mbs, so the speed is there

More accurately, the Extreme IV is rated at 40 MB/sec, or 320 Mbps.

That's twice the bandwidth Panasonic engineers say they need to record HD footage reliably, and the Extreme IV is selling for $170 for 8GB compared to $700 for an 8GB P2 card. This bodes well for affordable flash-based video recording, but I don't know if anyone ships a solution which would replace a Firestore drive yet.

Tha trick is if 40mbs is a burst rate or a sustained rate.
CF-based solution to capturing HDV would be very sweet!

Sandisk claims their speed ratings are for sustained read/writes, so even allowing them a little slack the Extreme IV is plenty for most affordable forms of HD recording. HDV only needs 25 Mbps, not 320, so the Extreme IV is well beyond that now.