The noise issue is not an hdv/sd issue but an issue with the low light sensitivity of the camera. However, you can shoot hdv and then render it out of your editing system as whatever you like. Just import the hdv clips onto an sd timeline and set your output for whatever you like....you should come out with a letterboxed 16x9 image on a 4x3 field. You will lose substantial resolution as the SD image has fewer pixels than that of an HDV image. What is correct about what you were told is that a standard dvd is SD, and if you want your output to be hdv, you need blu-ray. But you can shoot in hdv and output as you need. I shot for years for a newspaper web site in which we shot and archived everything in HDV from XHA1's, then formatted an output version at web resolution, even smaller than sd. Nothing to lose, as the data rate for hdv and sd is the same (HDV is more data but more compressed), so you use the same tapes / same amount of tape. Personally, I believe having a hi=res original is essential as future use of your material would very likely demand higher-res output. You can res down ok, but you can't res up what's not already there...