Greg, get a flash RAM camera of some kind.
MiniDV works but is obsolete and usually needs FireWire to stream the result
DVD or MiniDVD, the media is either too big or too expensive for the recording time available
HD, IMHO hard disks and mobile devices don't mix well. The disks cannot take the shocks it will get
The cameras with smaller sensors usually can be found with longer optical zooms, easier to implement with a small sensor
The cameras with larger sensors (usually better cameras) are typically limited to 10x or so zoom
CMOS sensors often do not "expose" the whole sensor at once, the image is recorded as a "wipe" across the sensor. This messes with some image stabilization techniques, especially ones applied after the fact as different parts of the same frame are actually recorded at different times
Find one that does GOOD stills too. That way you only carry one camera. The recent really good DSLR type cameras that do video are just too big to carry around.
I have a old Sony miniDV camera that I won't replace until it breaks because I haven't found anything significantly better.
Some video from that camera is at
http://www.girr.org/girr/video/GIRR_Loop_with_Camcorder.mov but you'll need some codec that will do h.264 to view it. I recommend QuickTime if you don't have a suitable codec, available free for Mac or PC at
http://www.apple.com/downloads/
