It's finally happening.
In the USA, more High Definition televisions are being sold than traditional 4:3 Standard Definition TVs.
After years of promises, 16:9 wide screens are on their way to becoming the new standard.
But what about our home movies? Should we be rushing out and buying High Definition camcorders? Maybe...
but maybe not.
There are standards wars going on.
There is also a higher price extracted from early adopters of still-new technology.
You need some technical background to help make an informed decision.
All video is NOT created equal.
Twenty-first century technology advances have brought us to a place where we can capture moving pictures (often with sound) on a wide variety of miniaturized handheld doo-dads from cell phones to Personal Data Assistant/Email devices to inexpensive digital still cameras.
No longer are our home movies something we show only to relatives.
New internet video publishing/sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video are popping up every day, providing nearly limitless opportunities for our videos to be seen.
Suddenly nearly anyone who can afford a cell phone can be a video movie producer.
Video is even replacing traditional film in cinematic movies as picture quality has improved, thanks largely to new computer technology.
However there is a world of difference between the clarity and detail of cinematic video and the small, shadowy movies you can take on your cell phone.
There are many contributing factors, but if we concentrate on the camera, they are:

1. Lens Quality
2. Resolution
3. Frame Rate
4. Digital Processing
5. Compression

Lens Quality: Photographs are made of light.
The first and most important part of every camera is always the lens.
Light passes through the lens, which can be a simple piece of curved clear plastic on the lid of your cell phone or a complex array of exquisite optical glass elements on a Hollywood movie camera.
The better the lens, the better the image.
But even the most expensive and carefully crafted lens changes the light passing through it in some small way, whether by absorption, reflection, refraction, or distortion.
The finest, most expensive camera is limited first and foremost by the quality of its lens.
Resolution: It is becoming common knowledge that digital images are made of of small pixels or picture elements.
A pixel is not necessarily a circular dot; it can be a tiny square or rectangle.
The resolution of a digital image is the number of pixels, which defines the density and detail level of the picture.
The resolution of a digital camera is generally determined by the pixel density of the light sensitive device that captures the light from the lens.
Resolution is related to the size of the image when shown on a screen or rendered on a printer.
In general it can be said that when it comes to video, the higher the resolution, the better the quality.
Standard Definition NTSC video is 720 x 480 pixels.
High Definition NTSC video has several possible resolutions, with the highest being 1920 x 1080.
Cell phones and inexpensive still cameras may capture video in 320 x 200 low resolution, which is suitable mainly for playback in small boxes on computer screens.
Low resolution video does not have enough detail to be blown up to fill a TV screen or computer monitor without becoming blocky and indistinct.
Frame Rate: Movies are still pictures (called frames) shown one after another fast enough to fool your brain into seeing motion.
How fast the pictures change is called the frame rate.
Standard video changes at about 30 frames per second.
Cinematic movies use a standard of 24 frames per second.
Any slower than that and the motion starts to appear jerky.
Cell phones and small still cameras may capture video as slow as 10 frames per second; fast enough to give an illusion of movement, but not smoothly.
Digital Processing: Every digital camera has a processor that interprets the image according to rules set up by the manufacturer.
Some settings are automatic and others you may be able to control from menus.
The art of interpreting color video is called "colorimetry" and every manufacturer does it a little differently.
Be aware that you should read reviews carefully and if possible look at pictures side-by-side from different camcorders before you decide on an expensive model.
The differences can be subtle, but they are real.
Compression: The best possible digital pictures come from "raw" images, which have little or no digital processing and are stored in their most detailed form.
Raw images consume an extremely large amount of storage space and they take time to transfer and to render on a screen.
At this time it is not practical to store and display digital video in raw form using a camcorder that is affordable for home use.
Compression techniques such as JPEG (JPG) and MPEG (MPG) are used to reduce the storage size of digital pictures.
Compressed pictures lose some details, but if done properly the images can still be stunning even though they take up a tiny fraction of the storage space of their raw versions.
At this time, all home camcorder video is automatically compressed during the digital processing stage.
The Move to HD There are two technologies competing for the dollars of home High Definition video buyers.
HDV and AVCHD.
Either can be a good investment, but your choice between them is one that deserves some research and study.
HDV stores video on standard mini-DV magnetic tapes.
AVCHD may use tapes, DVDs, or even store your movies on small hard drives.
AVCHD is a newer standard that supports higher resolution "true" HD, but if you are interested in doing computer video editing, there are fewer tools available for AVCHD than there are for the more mature and established HDV standard.