Cheapo Minidv Camera: Shoot At 4:3 Native Or 16:9 Stretched?

[chanchao]

Here's my dilemma. I have a cheap MiniDV camera that's 4:3 native. (Sony DCR-TRV22E). I don't plan to buy another one until this one breaks.

I'm shooting mostly video that I'd like to be around for a long time; my 1 year old baby is growing up and I want her to still be able to view it when she's 40 years old.

Now somewhere during mine or her lifetime, I/she will have really awesome wide screen super TV's.

Basically all I want is the video footage I shoot now to look as good (image quality) as possible. So I'm leaning towards sticking with the native 4:3 aspect ratio, even though those vids WILL get watched on 16:9 (or wider even) super TV's... Using 'digitial stretch / wide pixel' would just mean losing resolution / image size right? Only advantage being that it would CURRENTLY fill a so-so quality plasma type TV reasonably well, correct? Or would image clarity loss be negligible if I switch it to 16:9? The loss of the top and bottom would lead to me taking less 'zoomed in' shots I suppose, so one way or another I'm paying a price in image resolution.. (?)

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Secondly, I mostly edit the captured video, then generate DVD style MPEG-2 videos. These are the videos I keep, I mostly don't keep the original raw DV video as it would get just too big.. In order to minimize loss and guarantee the best video quality in the future, should I generate an edited DV format video as well and just buy a really big harddisk to keep that? With the loss of quality in going to DVD, will that make my first question a bit irrelevant, as 4:3 native or 16:9 stretched won't seem that different in quality after going to DVD?

...Just spent 2 hours reading video websites and if anything I have more questions and am less certain now than I was before.... Anyone with 2 cents worth of common sense for me?

Cheers,

Chanchao

[Firefoxx]

I would prefer keeping it in the 4:3 aspect ratio, since that's the way the camera actually works at its best, and you record the most of the scene. You could crop it to suit later if you wanted. If you had a HD camcorder, then that would be another matter, since they're natively 16:9.

I never keep the DV stream on the computer after editing, but I do keep the original tapes. It might become more feasible when HD-DVD discs and recorders become affordable, but not now.