I picked up a Canon Vixia HF100 last Christmas for about $530 and I love it. Granted ours is just for personal use, but it shoots beautiful full HD (1080p). It's a flash based camera. The HF100 comes w/ no on-board storage and just uses SDHC cards. Other models in the Vixia line do have some on-board storage - but for the price difference it's not worth it. Besides, I couldn't see any real advantage to having on-board flash memory vs just going w/ SDHC cards.
I was able to pick up 3 16GB Transcend SDHC cards for < $30 each when I bought the cam. With SDCH cards so cheap these days, they're a pretty close match to tape as far as backup/storage is concerned - except they are a lot easier to work with and store.
I can get just over 2 hours of 1920x1080 w/ each 16GB card.
