I must be missing somthing. We film alot and have 5handycamsthat average $250 each off ebay. I made a DVD of our black bear hunts on my PC and it turned out pretty good. One thing we could use is a wireless mic for better audio.

We talk about upgrading to a better v-cam someday but I don't see the return on that investment.

i use a canon xha1

All depends on what qualities are important to you. If you want a 3ccd camera with superior low light video, good optical zoom, external mic/shotgun mic plug-ins you are going to pay....For Hi-Def double that price. Most TV channelswontacceptvideo now unless it is Hi-Def. For making DVDs for family, friends, and selling locally the handycams work fine.

The tv show that our footage will probably make it on is a South Carolina based show...its called SC Outdoors. I guess you could call it local but it is seen all over the state. The host told us that they use a Canon GL1...he's going to film a couple of our hunts in mid-late September but we want to film some of our own too. He said he would be glad to put some of our self-filmed hunts on the show. I guess I just need to call him back and ask him if we could get away with using something like a handycam...to get started at least.