With image sensor technology making incremental improvements every year, both CCDs and CMOS sensors will continue to get better while becoming even more affordable, which will lead to higher resolution, low-cost camcorders.

CCD vs. CMOS: CCDs have traditionally provided a “cleaner” image via a higher SNR than CMOS, but recent and ongoing developments in CMOS technology have closed this gap, especially in the case of large, high-resolution, high-frame-rate chips.With CMOS, less vertical smear is an advantage; vertical smear is very common when shooting with a very bright object, such as a light, that is in the shot. The effect shows up as “points” coming off a bright spot, which CMOS helps to reduce.

CCD: Charge-Coupled Device that is used to detect light, but not color, in video and digital still cameras. On their own, most sensors would detect only black-and-white images. To achieve full color, filters are used on the chips, either spread out evenly (three-CCD Red, Blue and Green, using dichroic filters in a prism) or on each pixel (one-CCD via colored filters).