Top Camcorders 2012
A camcorder (formally a video camera recorder) is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit; typically for out-of-studio consumer video recording. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage; for instance marketing materials may present the device by its colloquial term camcorder, while full name on the package and manual is often video camera recorder.
The majority of devices that are capable of recording video are camera phones and digital cameras primarily intended for still pictures, but the term "camcorder" is often restricted to mean a portable, self-contained device having video capture and recording as its primary function.
The earliest types are tape-based camcorders which employed analog recording onto videotape cassettes. Nowadays, digital recording has become the norm, with tape being gradually replaced with other storage media such as internal flash memory, hard drive, and SD card. As of January 2011, none of the new consumer-class camcorders announced at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show record on tape. Camcorders that do not use magnetic tape are often called tapeless camcorders, while camcorders that permit using more than one type of medium, like built-in hard disk drive and memory card, are sometimes called hybrid camcorders.