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Poor video quality!
But there is a ray of light on the horizon with the introduction of AVCHD. Now this little baby records your video directly onto your DVD, hard drive or flash memory in stunning high definition, but it is still new technology, which means it's a little pricey at the moment and some other technologies such as editing software and the DVD player in your home won't be able to read it. This will obviously change in time as prices tumble and everyone else plays catchup! Unfortunately, I've got more bad news :-( You can only record about 10 minutes of full high definition on a DVD and 20-25 minutes in standard definition. Not much good and this is why the camcorder manufacturers are all starting to favor hard drives and flash memory cards as it can offer up to one hour of HD recording time.
DVD-RW and DVD+RW are discs that can be recorded on again and again. There is also DVD-RAM, but it is only used by a couple of manufacturers and a lot of home DVD players won't play it. What type of disc that does play in your home DVD player is something you really need to think about, especially if you buy one of the new models that uses AVCHD, because as I mentioned earlier, the majority of home DVD players just will not play them, which means you will have to buy a new DVD player as well as a new DVD camcorder. You can't just take a DVD disc out from your DVD camcorder, throw it in your DVD player and start watching your masterpiece. You will need to 'finalize' the disc first which can be as short as 10 seconds and as long as 10 minutes, depending on the model and how much footage is on there.
In hot and humid conditions, they will barely make it to their fifth birthday! Now miniDV tape isn't much better and lasts the same as a DVD. The trick is to store all your important memories on a hard drive for safe keeping. I would also recommend you edit your videos first or you will need Terabytes of storage capacity on your computer after a while. Anyway, it's a good habit to get into because even the most doting Grandmother will start to flag after fifty minutes of watching your newly arrived bundle of joy gurgling into the camcorder ;-) 
Sony has the greatest choice of models and price, but like all the other major camcorder manufacturers, they are moving away from this technology into hard disk drives and flash memory. They have announced two new high definition models for 2008, the Sony HDR-UX10 (See picture right - $799 MSRP) and the HDR-UX20 (See picture top of page - $999 MSRP) which use the new fangled, but much improved AVCHD recording format. They should be in the shops end of February. Four new standard definition DVD camcorders from Sony are hitting the shelves at the end of January 2008, with the the DCR-DVD610 ($349 MSRP), DCR-DVD710 ($399 MSRP), DCR-DVD810 ($479 MSRP), and DCR-DVD910 (See picture above middle of page - $649 MSRP) keeping up the Sony tradition, but make the most of it because I don't expect to see as many new SD models next year. Panasonic also only announced one new token DVD camcorder for 2008, the VDR-D50 ($349.95 MSRP), but that's probably the last new model we shall see from them.
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But this will mean even smaller camcorders for you and me, and with crystal clear video quality using the next generation AVCHD technology. Something to look forward to then ;-)