I want to purchase a camcorder and I am completely lost!!!

There are so many different varieties on the market.

I want to spend about £400 - £500.
I want a good all-rounder family camcorder.
A camcorder that I can attach to a VHS video player.

I would want to make movies indoors, so it is important that it has night vision or whatever so that the picture is not dark and of good quality.

I see that there are camcorders that have a hard-drive that do not require any tapes – are they any good?
8mm, DV etc – What one shall I go for.

There are also HD camcorders on the market – Can I view the video on a normal TV, through a VHS video player – or do I have to connect it through a HD TV? Are they any good?

I would really appreciate some help and guidance.
I am soo sorry for all the questions.

VHS won't work at HD level, but you should be able to use the camcorder footage as a high quality source and you would probably get very nice results - S-VHS would be a little better again. You need to check what output sockets are on the one you want to buy.

But neither would be in HD. For that, you'd need to write as a file to a computer (or file on a DVD that only a computer would read) and use the computer as a source. HD-DVD/Blu Ray rated editing software would be required.

You can get blu-ray/hd-dvd writers for computers, for about £150 or so, but I'm not aware of any stand-alone hd-dvd/blu ray writers. (Of course, someone will step in with an example now.)

Of course you could edit your footage on a computer, and then save it back to the camcorder and attach that directly to your HD TV.