I bought this video camera to record the birth of my child. I got it and immediately checked it to make sure that everything was in working condition. It worked fine. Several months down the line I took the camera out to make sure what kind of card I needed to purchase for taking still photos. When I turned it on and tried to use it, I got the recording of sounds in the room but no picture. Now keep in mind I thought that I was maybe looking at the lens cap, but it was no longer covering the lens. I adjusted everything pertaining to the darkness of the screen and was still unable to get anything other than a black screen on the LCD or through the view finder. Thank goodness it is still under warranty or I would just be out $800.

I have had my Panasonic VDR M30 camcorder since Christmas, 2003. I have made five calls to their tech support line, where their technical people admit there is a problem and tell me they are working on fixing the drivers for the camcorder's software to make it work with Windows XP. They refuse to return my telephone calls, and they refuse to exchange my camcorder for another model. They treat their customers very poorly. I would give this product, and this company, zero stars if that were an option.

I'll go into the negative first.

Software: the software did take me a few tries initially installing it on our desktop, was kind of a pain, because the instructions are not very detailed. When I installed it again on my laptop, was much easier, just have to make sure you do it in the right order (do not plug in the USB cable until you click on USBReady.exe, then plug in cable into your camera and the pc. Then install the following: DVDRam Driver, MyDVD, DVD MovieAlbumSE. You'll have to restart the computer after installing each one of these).

Lighting: In dark spaces and at night, honestly, the lack of lighing can make the picture quality in these settings horrible, depending on how dark the atmosphere is. In certain instances, you can go back and use your picture editing software to improve the quality and it turns out fine, but in others, it remains awful, and theres nothing you can do. Make sure you have proper lighting!!! Not sure if there is a light attachment yet, but one is SEVERELY needed.

Thats really it on the negative - grant it they are pretty big negatives when talking about an expensive camera like this, but I found everything else to be great, including the picture and movie quality.

Playing Double-Sided 2.8GB DVDs (smaller than normal DVDs) on your computer:
Despite what others have said, you CAN play these discs (they are about half the size of normal DVDs) on your computer, without having to use the camera as a device attached to your computer to access your pictures. Included on the install disc is a DVDRAM Driver - after you install this, you can pop the DVD into your computers DVD drive, and view pix (pix are stored as JPGs, but you'll need to use the software to play the movies - and make sure you have enough RAM on your pc - my laptop has only 256MB of RAM which nowadays is not enough to run anything, and movies sometimes don't play well - not because of the software (I think, I hope) but because of our memory capacity the laptop).

Picture Quality:
Picture Quality, with the right lighting mind you, has been exceptional, from what I have seen. Keep in mind I have not owned any other kind of camera like this before (really went from throw-away cameras to this one), so I might not be the best one to comment here, but to me it looks great!

Ease of Use:
I don't undertand when others say it is not intuitive to use. The disc navigation is very straight forward and joystick oriented. Changing modes is very easy from stills to movies to the stick memory cards.

Size:
This thing is so compact, you can fit it in the palm of you hand, and doesn't weigh a ton. Awesome!

Zoom:
Pix - 40x.
Movies - 240x.

Overall:
I really do enjoy this camera, it is great.

Advice:
Wait until the next version comes out to purchase. Some of the above wrinkles should be ironed out and it should be much cheaper than the @ $800.00 we paid. But DVD cameras I'm thinking are going to the new standard, and you'll want to jump on board this cool technology as soon as you can. Plus you can play the DVD-Rs (In my experience, I have not been able to play DVD-RAM discs yet) in your non-computer home DVD players, and now they are making progressive scan DVD players with a built-in memory stcik attachment - too cool, but again right now too expensive. We should have waited but we just had a baby!

I urge you to take a look at the Sony DVD200 or 300 series camcorders. From soup to nuts the Sony product is much better. Do a simple compare and you will find that the Panasonic camcorder does not have half the technology or enhancements. If you are looking at spending 700+ dollars on something to record your families memories, I would consider spending an extra $200 for something that is going to give you pleasure throughout the years. Also, Sony has many add-on products (Lens, Tripod, Filters etc.) that are handy!

My only advice is that if you are going to spend this much money, either wait until you can afford a real product or buy the right product first.

Small, cute, fairly intuitive - works good, except night vision(not that great). Needed to refer manual for seeing couple of things - "DVD needs to be finalized to play in DVD/laptop" & "how to connect AC power to finalize disc". Very convenient that output goes to DVD disc directly! Price much cheaper than Sony DVD camcorder :)

After less than two years, this recorder crashes and destroys everything I've recorded every time I try to record on a 60 minute DVD for more than 55 minutes. It works fine as long as I remember to stop it before 55 minutes, but losing everything seems like an awfully big price to pay for losing track of the time. I've called customer support and they say it shouldn't do this and they don't know why it does, and there's nothing to be done about it since it's not under warranty anymore. (They'll fix it for $300 + parts, but I'm reluctant to pour more money into this piece of junk.) For $700, I expect a product that will work reliably for more than a year!

I bought this camera during xmas of 2003. The camera is really easy to use, but you need a Master's degree in computer programing to get the software to work. I have had little success in getting the usb connection to work. Still after struggling with this thing for over a year I discovered that you can use the dvd ram in a drive eliminating the need of the usb. A prior review suggests that you have to load the dvdram driver to make the transfer to the computer easier. In the configure menu you have to tell the software to read the disc in your dvdrom drive. The transfer is still slower then XMAS, but at least I don't have to pray to the electronic's gods to get my videos transferred. One last thing, the manual for the software is completely useless.

I have owned this camera for about 1 year, and it has performed very well and is fully compatible with Windows XP. It produces very good quality and has been completely reliable.

I suggest that you should buy wide-angle and telephoto accessory lenses. These cost me about $100 CAD (they are "no-name", so I can't give you a specific recommendation). These increase its flexibility and improve quality by extending the optical zoom instead of using the digital zoom.

To address some of the issues raised in earlier reviews:
- Most camcorders do not include an accessory light, to reduce the initial purchase cost. There are various aftermarket choices available.
- The DVD is in DVD-RAM format. If your DVD-ROM drive does not support this format, it won't be able to play it. This is hardly Panasonic's fault. Although DVD-RAM is not widely supported, you can find drives that support it.
- The camcorder provides 3 levels of quality. Make sure you choose the Xtra setting; this gives a very good picture.
-(...)