Or if you prefer: do I switch or do I not switch ...?

All these goodies made me wonder about the reliability of my car to get my family around. However, it has never failed me yet. It's ability to adapt to my driving style and comfort is still very pleasant and most importantly, ABOVE ALL, we are accustomed to one another and I am even able to anticipate its quirks. In short, the idea of trading it in for a newer model was not that appealing to me.

But back to our subject…

To avoid making a rash decision, let's consider the various aspects of the decision making process.
Currently SD is a mature format and highly compatibile. For the moment, it's not quite so true for HD ...
But the future for HD is  promising and as Pierre Dac said (French humorist), its future is in front of her ...

While the HD allows a user experience without equal, it would be dommage While HD provides the user with an unequalled experience, you must have a high definition screen to truly enjoy it.
This change will require a hefty investment and certain prerequisites. Moreover, we must be prepared to spend time to understand and resolve unforeseen problems. Just as one example among the problems that  may arise, is there are several HD formats (1280, 1440, 1920) that can be used in video editing software that must correspond exactly to the HD screen otherwise the quality is not good  (it's more or less visible depending on the scenes).
So more than just the format is needed, as opposed to SD where there is only one standard and where we do not see that issue.

Should I upgrade my camera or not ?
You could have a very good SD format camera with a 3CCD sensor and high quality lens, or an HD camera, which - although it supports the high-definition format - it may have a sensor and/or a lens of questionable quality. Once you select a model, it is strongly recommended - before you purchase - to do the following:

• On the Internet, find users who had experience with that model
• On your favorite video editing forum, ask if there are any known compatibility issues;

Finally seek candid advice from other users if necessary.

Some other considerations:

• AVCHD format is more of a resource hog than the HDV format. The latter is recommended if your PC is not very powerful.
• PC must have at least one Dual-Core 2.66 GHz with 2 GB of memory with a hard disk system and a hard drive dedicated to video, a newer PCI-Express graphics card, for example nVidia 7600 series or better (the minimum specifications provided by publishers of video software are often lower than that).
• Windows XP SP2: fully mature and successful while Vista is a little young and has known problems (for Service Pack 3-SP3-, we are waiting for the official announcement of availability from Microsoft before installing it and download it only from the location indicated by Microsoft).
• If the PC is used for other things besides video (Internet, games, chat, downloads of all kinds, gadgets, etc.). it may happen that one day the video editing software will become unstable and freeze up. The investment of a machine dedicated to video is therefore quite justified and is a guarantee of security if there is a lot of video editing.
• In selecting the camera, check how it actually records the format announced capture, some machines record in a lower definition than you can capture and some camera models have been criticized about this.
• Filming in HD and connecting the camcorder directly to the view screen is no problem in terms of quality, but for the creation of a DVD, all the equipment must be HD compatible, you will have to buy a Blu-Ray burner or a PS3 ...
• Studio 12 supports Blu-Ray Disc and can create HD menus.
• A wealth of information about users HD experiences can be found at: http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/150/ShowForum.aspx

Conclusion :
We have layed all the cards on the table, now it's up to you to decide what hand to play.  So, do you do like your neighbor and make the switch or do you keep your good "old clunker" until the electronic defects it has with its cruise control get fixed?

{Technical article directed by Rémy Fehlmann and translated by Le Papy ... Thanks to Loosecannon for the fine tuning}