well I was hsopping today at Circuit city and they had the JVC HD1 for 3500 as usuall got chatting with a guy and I mentioned that its avail for so much cheaper online, I mentioned royal cameras price just to go fishing and they wanted to price matc that price. Now I know the HD1 isn't the greatest cam because its only single chip but how would it compare in normal dv mode to say a optura xi or dv953?

In "normal mode" it is not a contender because the video effective CCD pixels are low. The reason for going with the HD1 is for the HD. There are no other consumer HD cams right now, other than the HD1 and HD10.

Also, why don't you check up on Royal here:

http://www.resellerratings.com

And see if you can find the store here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16160

Frank, I think he means Circuit City would price match Royal's price.

Yes, I know. But I doubt Circuit will. Let's see how this story will unfold. :)

the reason they will is Circuit City just institued a BVG (best Value Gauntee) ont thier visa CC, the nice thing about this is its not thru Circuit city its thru the bank they deal with and all they care about is its a real company, they don't care if its online or not (already tried with a smaller purchace) the only shame is that CC doesn't carry any real prosumer cameras (gl2, vx2000...etc) I would love to be able to actually get a gl2 for 1350 like royal has it :D oh well maybe I'll just go with a dv953 and live with it for now