Startup time
 

I let my daughter try my SR7 with the intent that I would buy one for her too so that she can take video of our grandkids. She loved the video and camera but had an interesting comment that she did not like the time it took to start up. She wants to be able to pick up the camera and instantly start shooting whatever the kids are doing. Action could be over by the time the SR7 is ready to record!!!. So I thought the pure memory card recorder would be fine but that doesn't have a viewfinder which she also wants!!! So I am on the lookout for an instant startup version, maybe in the next series of releases coming out there will be what she wants. Solid state memory has this advantage of instant start and could work well as a buffer until either HDD or mini DVD was ready to record.

Ron Evans

The new Panasonic SD5 and SD7 have a 3 second pre-record buffer feature. But, you have to have the camcorder on all the time if you want instantaneous shooting. I don't know of any camcorder that will allow instant start from power off.