Possibly the dumbest question known to mankind
 

what a way to come in. Could anyone here explain HDV-SD60P and where/when/how it should be used? Thanks.

Well, there are two 480p with the HD100. One is HDV-SD60P. It's a HDV format using 480 lines instead of 720, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Fits in your format for standard TV (vertically).
There is also DV-24P/24PA that can be captured as 480 lines, progressive but in traditional 4:3 format.

480p60 is a broadcast standard under ATSC. Some stations use it that have upgraded to digital broadcasting, but aren't going HD yet. 480p60 also offers easy upconversion to 720p60, though for that you may want to wait for the HD200/250 so you can shoot it natively.

What an awesome thread title - you're going to have 1000 hits on this baby...

I couldn't wait to see what it was all about!

o.k. Thanks- could one assume that shooting HDV480/ 60p would give more "colorspace" than shooting in SD (perhaps a second question),even though they are both 480 lines?
Would this be the format to use to shoot footage for slo-mo?(no more questions)

Just confused, how can it be considered HD if it's only 480 lines?

Yup, this is what you'd use for slow-mo. It works pretty well too. Here's one thread on it:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67251
It should answer your next question of how to do the slow motion.

As far as color-space it is HDV and thus 4:2:0 instead of 4:1:1. Not more, just different.

Brian, it's not technically "HD" (though that is a relative term in itself), but it is recorded in the HDV codec in order to fit all the information in. They would have made it possible for you to record 720p60 if they had a more efficient compressor (which they do now for the 200/250). But even though it doesn't have the resolution of HD (720 or 1080 lines) it can be scaled up quite nicely.

It is actually classified as ED (extended definition) under the ATSC standard - credit to Barry Green for this bit of information.

Actually, HDV has a wider gamut than DV because it's not limited by NTSC's colorspace limitations.

It's recorded in HDV format, using HDV colorspace and HDV compression, 6 frame GOP (MPEG2). It's not strictly HD, for what I know, I could be wrong, in terms of resolutions, but the recording format is the same.
No different of what happens with bitmap encoding, JPEG doesn't dictate which resolution you must use. As long as the final result can be stored in a DV cassette, pretty much any resolution is OK.
There is also 576p available :)

In what sense is it extended if it's only 480 lines? is it because of the 16x9?

It's 60-frame progressive scan instead of 30-frame interlaced. Twice the temporal and spatial resolution. Makes a big difference.

what is temporal and spatial resolution? I googled it and ended up with articles on 3d vectorscopes and long strings of math and stuff.

Temporal = time, spatial = space. It basically means that when you go with progressive instead of interlaced scanning, you end up with more samples in both time and space, so you have finer motion and detail. Plus you get rid of all the problems with interlacing that have been plaguing us for the better part of a century.