How Do You Record Your Life?

My mom bought me my first camcorder. It was a JVS with no features that was on clearance due to the digital camcorders becoming popular. A few years ago I bought a Samsung digital because I wanted an easier way to get my movies on DVD (without 300+ cords). Well, as naive as I was, you still need to 'play' the movie to the computer and it still needs to render, so no time saved there. Also, going to digital I thought - No Tapes! That was wrong too.

My misfortunate purchase was the Samsung SC-D103. It wasn't the cheapest and it wasn't the most expensive. The reviews were semi-ok, as most were that I checked. We didn't use it much. The video is awful. It doesn't even touch the quality of the cheap analog I have. The movie gets fuzzy, boxy, and very pixelated. About a year after we bought it it was holiday season again so I dug it out and tried to clear the tapes. Well, the tapes appeared blank even though I knew they weren't! I'm in panic mode because I didn't have the stuff off of them and I wanted to get this thing ready. I looked all over for a tape to clean a miniDV head. I finally found one and cleaned it the max amount of times, testing it in between. It didn't work. Finally I tried the time-tested solution of smacking the bottom of the thing. Hello, we have picture! So there is something wrong with the camera that has barely been used - and never been dropped. If you set it down normally it goes back to not being able to play the tapes.

Bottom line, I'd like a new camera. I'd like a reasonably-priced model that uses miniDV tapes and takes a good picture without all the pixelation. Any suggestions?