Are compatible batteries a good option as spare battery or one should stick to the original batteries i.e. the brand of the camcorder(Sony in my case).

Hello Nitin,

There is a post here (posted 12 Oct) headed "On 3rd Party batteries" with some users getting upto 3 years usage out of them.

None mentioned anything about any major prolems.

cheers,
Peter

Here is the link:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33281