I have checked out the HM700. It felt great in my hands. It has the clearest and sharpest LCD screen I've seen in a camcorder. (I'm not 100 percent certain because I held the camera for only five minutes, but I felt that I was able to focus without the need for a field monitor.) Most important to me is that the camera is HD and shoots native .MOV files on SD cards which makes work flow much easier when you edit with FCP. And, of course, SD cards cost a lot less than P2 and SxS cards.
My one concern is horizontal resolution. I started to notice this feature in cameras after I read the Videomaker review of the Panasonic AG-HPX170. The review said: "The actual horizontal resoution of the HPX170 is a little disappointing, coming in at a mere 650 lines. Other similarly-priced camcorders come in between 800 and 1,000." I think this is important because the quality difference would probably be noticed by anybody watching your production on a 52-inch HDTV, for example.
The problem is that the specs on this camera (and others) don't give you horizontal resolution. How is a consumcer supposed to compare producds if you don't have the numbers?
Has anybody worked with the HM700 and can you please provide your opinion of the camera? Also, please discuss the issue of horizontal resolution.
