Hi Bryan

Many thanks for all the input. However I have decided to go with the Panasonics mainly due to the fact that they are almost a clone of my current cams (same case and menus/controls so there is no learning curve) and I do like the manual audio panel and XLR inputs. As all my output will be in SD anyway for clients I can live for the moment with converting the AVCHD clips to HDV via VAAST's Upshift and I can still dump the original HD footage onto a spare drive for clients that eventually buy a BluRay player. Once my 'puter gets an upgrade I can edit raw AVCHD but the quality on some raw footage I played with via Upshift and using Vegas 7 was excellent on a 42" HD TV and Vegas seems to handle HDV with ease converted at 50mps on my DuoCore

Chris

Congrats on getting it all figured out. I am sure those cams will work out great for you.