I am impressed with the picture quality of DCR HC 40E as well as the features packed into the handycam. I am using this since the last 3.75 years.
I have seen quite a few posts where people have complained about the difficulties faced in downloading video from the MiniDV cassettes to the PC hard disks.Yes, I had faced them too when I was trying it through the USB port and Pinnacle TV Tuner card.
However, I found out that the easiesr and the best way is to use a firewire card(ieee 1394 / ilink) [brand "Enter" costs around Rs. 500 /- along with the cable].
The free software you need to use to start/stop the download is called WinDV [https://windv.mourek.cz]. This is a simple executable that you can use to download audio/video data from the MiniDV tapes. This software has a mechanism to control the the handycam playback so as to sync the tape playback and capture. But wait, this stores the audio and video data as uncompressed AVI i.e. a 15 minute footage would occupy 3.19 GB of your hardisk.
However, there are free softwares like foto2avi using which you can create a DVD out of the AVIs. See https://doom9.org/. I, however, prefer and use Nero Vision over Foto2Avi.
Now, here is a cool feature in dcr hc40e:
You can feed in Audio/Video(AV) signal to your DCR HC 40E and get a DV output. This means that you can record TV programs, as your TV receives it, onto your PC using the same set of softwares mentioned above. You need to connect the handycam to the TV’s aux output ports using the av cable supplied with the handycam. And, as before, connect the handycam to your PC using the firewire(ieee1394) cable. Now, you need to turn on A/V -> DV option in the menu(refer your manual) and voila - your TV programs appear on the HandyCam screen and in WinDV on your PC.
Since WinDV stores the audio-video data as uncompressed data, you get to choose your compression rate at the time of DVD authoring.
Now that TataSkyPlus is around, this might appear a little cumbersome:-). But, it’s good to know what your DCR HC 40E is capable of. Guys, this IS a great handycam. Do not get sidetracked with minor problems like download, et. al. It’s just the matter of choosing the right way to do it. Once you get it, you’ll appreciate this piece.
The "Dirty head" problem is a genuine issue with, I guess, all handycams that have a magnetic tape based or lens based recording mechanism. This generally happens when your handycam is suddenly exposed to a hot and humid env. from a cold one. E.g if you have kept the hc exposed in your cold ac room and suddelnly step out of the room. Condensation causes the "dirty head" problem. I haven’t been able to overcome this(apart from giving some temp adaption time lag).
I have faced this problem in a windy situation as well.
This, however might not be an issue with the hard disk handycams and the harddisks, afaik, are sealed.
IMHO the miniDV handycams are much better that the DVD handycams which has the initial startup time issue. I concede that the hard disk handycams are the best.