Analog

8 mm CamcorderVHS: compatible with standard VCRs, though full-sized VHS camcorders are no longer made. Obsolete as a production medium.
VHS-C: Designed for compact consumer camcorders; identical in quality to VHS. Obsolete.
S-VHS: Largely used in high-end consumer and professional equipment; rare among mainstream consumer equipment, and obsoleted by digital gear.
S-VHS-C: Designed for consumer equipment. Never sold well compared to Hi8. Obsolete.
Betamax: Only used on very old Sony camcorders and portables; obsolete by the mid/late-80s in the consumer market although it continues to be used by professionals in the form of Betacam.
Video8: small-format tape developed by Sony; equivalent to or slightly better than VHS, but not compatible. Obsolete.
Hi8: Enhanced-quality Video8; originally used for professional field production, but now limited to ultra-low-end consumer market.

Digital

MICROMV camcorder and tape (top) compared to miniDV and Hi8 tapesDigital Tapeless: Low-end digital tapeless systems often use an MPEG-4 codec and flash memory; high-end versions, on the other hand, store video data to hard disk or optical disc.
H.264 codec based AVCHD format, which records MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compressed video to various kinds of tapeless media (recordable optical discs, flash memory, hard disks, etc).
DV codec based:
MiniDV and several derivatives, including DVCPRO from Panasonic and DVCAM from Sony. DV records the highest quality pictures (generally agreed to be at or near broadcast-quality) on DV tapes that are easily transferable via Firewire or USB to personal computers. Though designed as a consumer standard, there is extensive use of MiniDV in low-budget film and television production.
Digital8, that uses Hi8 tapes (Sony is the only company currently producing D8 camcorders, though Hitachi used to). Some models of Digital 8 cameras have the ability to read older Hi8 analog format tapes. Though the format's technical specifications are of the same quality as MiniDV, in implementation most Digital8 equipment has been mid- to low-end consumer equipment, with virtually no demand in professional settings.
MPEG-2 codec based:
MICROMV: Uses a matchbox-sized cassette. Sony was the only electronics manufacturer for this format, and editing software was proprietary to Sony and only available on Microsoft Windows; however, open source programmers did manage to create capture software for Linux[2]. The hardware is no longer in production, though tapes are still available through Sony.
DVD (with the biggest market increases): Uses either Mini DVD-R or DVD-RAM. This is a multi-manufacturer standard that uses 8 cm DVD discs for 30 minutes of video. DVD-R can be played on consumer DVD players but cannot be added to or recorded over once finalized for viewing. DVD-RAM can be added to and/or recorded over, but cannot be played on many consumer DVD players, and costs a lot more than other types of DVD recordable media. The DVD-RW is another option allowing the user to re-record, but only records sequentially and must be finalized for viewing. The discs do cost more than the DVD-R format, which only records once. DVD discs are also very vulnerable to scratches. DVD camcorders are generally not designed to connect to computers for editing purposes, though some high-end DVD units do record surround sound, a feature not standard with DV equipment.
HDV: Records up to an hour of HDTV MPEG-2 signal roughly equal to broadcast quality HD on a standard MiniDV cassette.