In short, it’s more an issue of workflow; with tape, you have to transfer media in “real time” where you copy or “ingest” media off of the camera via playback and capture via firewire. A time consuming issue, not to mention that due to more moving parts, tape transports are more prone to failure than the other two options.
Hard Disk-not as problematic, but remember that these are the same 1.8” SATAs found in iPods in most cases. These are also prone to failure and although more convenient (more storage/record time, no removable media), replacing hard drives can be a daunting service request…most camera warranties don’t cover…
Removable solid state media (SD, etc.) seems to be the way things are going-you want to make sure to buy the “Class 6” media which costs a bit more but will hold up to bandwidth requirements and robust enough for repeated use…the main issue is to fit data onto that media, it must be compressed a bit more than HDV. So with AVCHD, the compression is greater, but the codec itself is a lot newer (based on MPEG-4 H.264 AVC). HDV, while used by “prosumer” companies such as Canon and Panny, also have a drawback-an older codec/standard (MPEG-2), and a different method for compression (GOP- or group of pictures, takes a full frame every 13 frames, and in-between those full frames, only writes “changed” data in the frames inbetween). The result is more rendering time in the editing process.
Final Cut Pro allows importing of HDV files but any processing/filters will always draw a red “render bar” as the frames will always have to be filled in before rendering fades/filters, etc. This is pretty readily apparent on PowerPC (G5) and older, not so much an issue with Intel.
AVCHD, on the other hand, is just starting to be supported as a codec in FCS, and since it doesn’t use GOP, it is full-frame rendered upon ingest. The issue with AVCHD is that since it’s a newer codec, all of the editing platforms need to develop new decoders to accommodate it. FCP / FCE supports AVCHD, but only on Intel processors…so there’s the caveat.