New camcorder- final check before buying

Question

An earlier thread helped me to decide which model to choose. I have settled on a Sony DCR-HC94E. ("E" is for "European".) It is said that FCE is picky about what cameras it will recognise. Therefore, the following are those parts of its spec. which I have detected from this forum as being important to satisfy FCE, and a few other features which suit my requirements. If anyone notices anything inadvisable, please shout. Thanks. Please note that I am not a professional and have not gone for a three-chip machine nor HD, on cost grounds.
Required by FSE:
Firewire. Actually, Sony’s iLink which is said to be Firewire although it has only 4 pins whereas Apple’s implementation has 6, the added two being for power. Sony tell me that when capturing, their camera must be connected to the mains and the four Firewire pins handle the data without trouble.
However, another point concerns page 15 of FCE’s “Getting Started”, which refers to “Apple Firewire” (the default) and “Apple Firewire Basic”, which “is a simplified device control protocol for camcorders and decks that aren’t compatible with the full Apple Firewire set. Using this protocol doesn’t affect the quality of the captured video or audio.” I am assuming that this is the same point above concerning 4/6 pins and that FCE will be happy if it turns out that the Sony iLink uses “Apple Firewire Basic”. Correct?
And that I will have Device Control?
In Easy Setup, should I select "Firewire Basic"?
The camcorder comes with a driver for the Mac, which provides for capture (presumably Device Control via FCE’s “Capture now” button).
DV, not MPEG.. whatsit.
miniDV tape cassette, not DVD, Hard Drive nor Solid state.
DV out. No DV in because, as I understand it, DV in is used for archiving video on to miniDV tape and I don’t think I would want that – I plan to archive videos on DVD as QT movies.
Sony say that the DCR-HC94E stripes a digital timecode on to the tape. I believe that FCE needs this.
Other Features (extract):
The chip is physically 16:9 and all its pixels are used in forming a 16:9 frame. If used in 4:3 mode, the pixels to the left and right are not used. I think that this is True Widescreen and not one of the compromise ways of achieving it by, eg., compression and subsequent expansion.
3.3 Megapixels “Advanced HAD CCD”.
10 times zoom (I would have liked more, but that’s life).
Manual focus, and full-range auto focus, White Balance (“Auto, Outdoor, Indoor, One-push”).
“Super SteadyShot”. (That is, anti-wobble control.) Electronic.
2.7 inch viewfinder LCD panel, 123,200 pixels
Low light performance - “Min. Illumination = 5 lux”.
Battery runtime = 2 hours.
No external mike (pity).
It is remarkably small. “What Digital Camcorder”, issue 77, has a praising review of the next model up (DCR-HC96E), the only difference being that the 96E has DV in.
Thanks for any observations before I plunge into my wallet and let the moths out.

Answer 1

Tom, Martin and Ian:Re. DV in etc. Thanks.
Being an amateur, (and beginner in video editing) my videos will, I think, be family movies; editing a 50-year old 8 mm cine film converted by a video lab to a PAL DVD, which I have nearly finished; and probably making videos of the country district where I live for depositing at the county library for future use, perhaps 100 years from now (if human civilisation survives that long which I doubt); and possibly some simple training videos. I am not planning on making artistic movies.
What I have been doing (so far only with the converted cine) is to edit it, export it as a QT file and use Toast (Roxio) to burn to DVD as the distribution version. (Toast also allows "burning" to a Disc Image, for checking before wasting DVD-Rs). I then check the DVD on a stand-alone DVD player and a domestic TV. I am assuming that all my efforts will likely follow that route.
Tom (and others) said:
"You want DV in. It lets you record your finished movie back to tape."
But why would I want to do that? Archiving? But is minDV tape so long-lasting? DVDs may not last more than 20 years and will need refreshing (re-recording on current media) which decendants won't do but that's another story. To view and check the finished video? But wouldn't my method (QT, DVD player, TV, described above) do that for me? To dub from a TV broadcast or to transfer to VCR tape via A/V? I have a combo VCR/DVD set-top video recorder which can do both of those (in the second case by dubbing from the above-mantioned distribution DVD).And VCR tape is on the way out, at least in the UK (Dixons no longer sell tape or tape-based VCRs) but of course peoples' tape VCRs will remain working for, say, 10 years.
On the lack of an external mike, its a budget thing. Sony Centre said that the only detectable camera noise would be if the ambient sound was very low and as a result the gain was increased. But hopefully I could add a suitable ambient audio track as a sound bed (Tom's book, page 132) to drown it - music, general ambient, sheep.
I'm probably wrong, but not too proud to be corrected.
Meteorites, hmmm... As a pessiminst, they worry me, but hopefully I will be dead before one strikes!