The future of digital media lies in hard disk and solid state media. MCE QuickStream DV offers reasonably-priced direct-to-disk recording. The self-powered six-hour capacity of the disk could potentially be very useful in long-format documentary recording.

Besides the long recording time, using a drive-based media format allows one to edit immediately. Of course, backing up all that media still requires some sort of low-cost back-up and DV tape still fits that purpose.