I'd say keep it as a Mini DV deck. Time to buy a second hand Z1.

It took a few more days than I thought it would, but I finally got a tutorial together and brought it online at my website: SD to HD with Avisynth

Ignoring my three rewrites of the tutorial content itself, proofreading over and over and reorganizing thoughts 'til sunup, the biggest time sink was my decision to take this beyond just a wall-of-text tutorial and create a custom Avisynth script that handles all of the deinterlacing, cropping, and upscaling with only a few arguments passed in. Anyone already familiar with Avisynth can skip the tutorial and jump straight to the script's page to learn more: SimpleSlugUpscale

I've tested the script, and my tutorial instructions, with both NTSC and PAL DV clips, and everything worked out as I expected it to. If anyone has any problems, or has ideas for revisions of SimpleSlug, I'm all ears, don't hesitate to contact me.

Just to clarify, and you all probably already know this -- although it's surprising how many people don't -- MiniDV describes the physical tape, while DV or HDV describe the signal on it. The VX will play back only SD DV recorded on MiniDV tape, and is useless for anything HDV.

It's shocking how many people shoot HDV and then think they can play back/capture on a different SD DV deck or cam. So while buying a used Z1 is a fine idea, there's no way the VX fits into that workflow unless you are exclusively shooting in DV mode.

This thread has taken a turn, one that I've never followed.

The Sony VX-2100 & PD150/170 will shoot a 16:9 SD file -- that is, a 'regular' 720x480 DV file flagged to display on a 16:9 monitor with no cropping, no letterboxing ... the camera takes a 16:9 window from the imaging chip, records it to tape in the maximum (and only) resolution allowed for DV, flagged with a PAR to display on a 16:9 screen. Note that this is a variation on a 4:3 recording, which is also subject to a PAR choice that makes a 720x480 signal display as if it was a 640x480 one ...

There are three advantages to this scenario: 1) there is no rendering or post required to create a 16:9 file; 2) there are no 'wasted' pixels -- the recording uses all 720x480 for image & none for 'black bars' or off-screen material; 3) most every DVD player knows how to handle just such a file once rendered to the appropriate codec ... no resizing required, 720x480 with a widescreen PAR will fill a 16:9 set properly.

Obviously, the result is not HD -- and no amount of rendering or post work will turn it into HD, IMHO. But it is true widescreen, and if that's what you want in SD, this camcorder delivers. If you want/need HD, there are various options at a range of prices that will deliver -- but the real market for HD is still small, and if your final delivery is on DVD irrelevant. So if the tool is right for the job, have at it.

Cheers,
GB