Canon HV30 vs Sony HDR-SR12

[cgbier]

...and then all them perfectly sounding movies end up on YouTube

[sayre85]

Hum, i own an HV, i love it and i wouldn't change it for nothing, but those DSLR are really going to make me change my mind one of these day. But i'm rather old-school, i prefer a tape based camcorder for now!

And about the "proper" film thing, sure a decent audio recorder with good techniques to capture the sound along with the right microphone for the right situation will be needed : otherwise it will sound, cheap & amateur. That's for the sound part.
For video, as always : a good lighting, a good choice of camera angles/movement, proper framing and some color correction will give you that "pro" look everyone's looking for.
What you need is : Lighting, Cinematography, Color Correction & Audio. With all that, even if it's shot at 60i, it will definitively look better than anything else shot at 24p without these basic requirements.

Do it! Do it!

But keep the HV. You'll find strengths in it that you won't find in a DSLR.

But, oh man, the image quality. *drools*

-A T2i Owner