The one's I've seen the highest praise for are the Pio 533/633 and the Panasonic DMR-EH50. I think Panny has a new line out now though. I don't know the model number.
The best place I know of for info is the AVS forum.
I researched there, ended up with a Panasonic ES-20, no hard drive. I'm using it to convert home movies. Works fine so far. Editing is very limited on the hard drive models. I will use my PC to do the editing. For the cost difference of non-HD to HD equippped stand alone recorder I bought a DVD burner for my computer instead.
For now just dumping everything as-is to DVD via the ES-20. I'll edit it later on the PC.
