You didn't have an option for "Yes, I shoot in hi-def, and it's a pain in the ass, but I think it's worth it." That's my vote.

I just did a pretty detailed post on GFY about a week ago on the hi-def issue. There is a LOT of confusion out there, because HDV, which most of the hi-def cameras under $6000 use, is really more of a "mid-def" format. It does shoot in 720p (720 lines progressive) and 1080i (1080 lines, interlaced), but then it throws away 75% of the data and heavily compresses everything into a data stream that is 1/4 of what true hi-definition is.

The reason for that is because it's not possible to store more than 25Mbits/sec on DV tape. True 1080p or even 720p HD requires a data stream of 50 to 100Mbps, which means that the content has to be stored on memory cards or hard drives.

That isn't to say that HDV is a shitty format; it's definitely better than regular (S) DV. But there is a dramatic difference between HDV and true HD in color depth, and because HDV stores data in MPEG format, it is, by nature, a "lossy" compression method which means that you have to be very careful, because additional data/definition is lost with every generation away from the original. So you can't for example take the edited AVI, bring it in, reedit it, re-output it, and do that 3 or 4 times without introducing artifacts or losing resolution.

We went back and forth for a long time; HDV is a lot simpler to work with because it's a tape format, but we ultimately decided to go with the full HD format and the tapeless recording (and insane amount of storage required) that comes with it.

I would say that if you are shooting content for use on the Web within the next 3-5 years, HDV is probably fine. But because we are shooting for web as well as DVD (and, perhaps later this year, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray), we decided that the investment in the extra technology would pay off in the long term.

Now the only catch is finding ways to efficiently store, backup and manage content where a 15 minute scene that is almost 15 gigs of data (vs about 3 gigs with standard DV)