First, you want to find a camera with the 3CCD feature (also referred to as "three chip"). This will produce better colors and they also tend to work better in poor lighting conditions, which are typical of webcam scenarios. Second, you want to avoid any media other than MiniDV or internal hard drive. DO NOT use a camcorder that writes directly to DVD. These are junk. Finally, you should try to use FireWire but many new PCs can stream from USB as well (you just have to tell the PC that it is a "web cam", Windows seems to be pretty good at figuring this out now). I know for a fact that FireWire works on both Macs and PCs, but PCs don't always have a firewire port. This question isn't about connectivity, so I'll just stick to camera recommendations.

Looks like the Panasonic HDC-SD9 is a good match for you. Circuit City has it for $510

The Canon HV30 looks good too. It has even better low light performance, but it is not 3CCD (instead it has one larger sensor). It does have firewire and MiniDV, though.
Source(s):
http://www.google.com/products?q=3ccd+camcorder&btnG=Search+Products


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