JVC HDD camcorder

So I understand that 18 minutes on a mini-DVD is not a good idea for underwater. I see that JVC has started to market 30GB internal hard drive cameras. http://www.jvc.ca/en/consumer/product-deta...?model=GZ-MG50U

Does anyone know anything about the quality of these cameras? Would a camera like this make a good choice for UW?

Does anyone know anything about the quality of these cameras? Would a camera like this make a good choice for UW?

Not having physically seen one yet, my first reaction would be it's not. It uses the same MPEG2 compression method as Mini-DVD camcorders to squeeze more data onto the hard drive so the quality probably suffers in comparison to MiniDV.

What I do like better about this one is that it probably writes to the hard drive much faster, with a MiniDVD, the session has to close and the data be written to the DVD before it can be viewed/edited later. Just like when you burn a DVD on your PC. I've read of cases where an unexpected power loss caused everything to be lost.

my .02