I have the panasonic sdr-h18. The first time I used it I thought the video looked bad when played from the camera to the TV, but it comes set to record and playback in widescreen. I have a 4:3 TV, so the image was being blown up and squished on the side. After I set it 4:3 mode it looked much better. On the computer it always looked ok. The OIS works very well. I know most family events, vacations, etc you not going to have a tripod so this is a very useful feature. You can be zoomed in quite a lot and have a good solid picture, unless you are walking or something like that. I found the close up shots look better than the wide angle shot.
We used it on vacation this summer. I have a larger battery and we shot several hours on several days with out charging the battery. It was nice to be gone a week and never worry about filling up a tape.
Here are 3 videos I recently made on the h18. The first 2 are in a little club (part of a music school) that was very dark and the lighting was always changing. The close up shots and the shots on your left are the h18, the right side my old jcv mini-dv.
 The 3rd video was inside a school gym, that is also kind of dark since no ones pictures ever come out unless they have a big external flash on there camera. You can see the zoomed in shots look sharper then the wide angle ones.
Also, these are about 1/2 quality of the originals since youtube compresses the videos down alot. The color and brightness are better on the copies I have.
I also have this video, it was made just before sunset. It was actually pretty dark outside but you can hardly tell. A warning, if you have sensitive children there are bad words used in this video. So turn the volume down. Its because everyone was shocked after I exploded an air bag and they let some words slip out.
If you have any question on it mail me.
