Can one record less compressed footage to this harddrive than you can with tape? Also, do any of the harddrives made by Sony, BH has one for 500 dollars, work as well or is the HD-100 neccessary?

Thank you for any help.

Can one record less compressed footage to this harddrive than you can with tape? Also, do any of the harddrives made by Sony, BH has one for 500 dollars, work as well or is the HD-100 neccessary?

Thank you for any help.

1. Less compressed.. NO. Firewire is after the HDV encoder.
2. Carefull about sony. I doubt they can handle 720p HDV at all.
3. Also What editor are you going to use? Some NLE's use their own format. getting a $500 drive (If it even CAN capture 720p 24/30/60p) will only record MT2. Then you may have to convert that to another format. On the other hand the better drives can capture into canopus, Final Cut Pro Quicktime, AVID etc. So that's money well spent for an upgrade.