[gafftaper]

It's just a black Image in the viewfinder both during recording and playback. I went through the whole menu and tried changing every setting that made sense. But like I said it worked when we put it in the bag and then it didn't work when I took it back out. So I doubt it's settings. Did the three year old kick the case around the bedroom... now there's a possibility.

I need to keep the price down to the under $400 range... so the HD's are out of reach at this point. Panasonic's got one with a 30 gig hard drive which looks pretty cool and is one of the top ratings on Cnet for the budget cameras. Or I may just go back to another Canon minidv tape camera. Although with the mysterious death of this one I'm inclined to look elsewhere. The Sony cams seem to rate really well on CNET with their top cameras but their low end cameras don't do very well.

Any other thoughts are appreciated. Mini DVD vs. Hard Drive vs. Mini-DV tape? They all seem equal in quality it's just a matter of convenience right?