Hmmm, that puzzles me! See, the quality of shooting is dependent upon the lens. Tape, hard drive or whatever, is just a place to store the video capture. The problem arises when the light coming into the lens (analogue data) is then converted into digital data for the sake of saving it onto a HDD. In digital recording (at least with sound) one must set the capture rate (snippets per second) and the bit rate (the quality of each captured snippet. In audio, a technique called Pulse Code Modulation is used). I say that to say this: perhaps the sample rate and bit rate can be ramped up to improve the quality. Then again, this would create much larger files and perhaps the camera's internals are not equipped to cope with the processing involved in capturing such large files. This means that the qulaity would suffer, but not on account of the lens.
OK, what was all that about! I must be bored! I am bored. Thanks for the input though. and I think you are right about the camcorder direction... maybe! The camera kit above jsut seems to e so unassuming, and easy to put places, perhaps even attached to a crash hemlet. Can't do those sorts of things with a camcorder. Well you could but ... OK, I'm going now!