Personally I prefer DV, or rather miniDV since miniDV is smaller
in size but same quality. It is just right for VCD quality.
When transferring to your PC, the quality is not lost, but the
footages from miniDV or DV tapes can be rather huge, ranging to few
gigs of data for a few minutes of footages. The quality of the
video data is similar to the original footages. Quality loss occurs
AFTER you export your video from the video editing software into
other formats. Ways to sustain the video quality is to export the
finished product back into miniDV or DV tapes, or you can export it
as uncompressed format (also known as lossless).
If you are doing proper film productions, I strongly recommend
miniDV or DV. HDD and DVD is more for watching on PC type of
videos.
