Hey Doug and Andi,
I am not sure wether you want high end or not, but I bought a Panasonic SDR-57 for my Egypt trip, and a friend used it for stills since she broke her camera, and I used it for video of the streets of Cairo at night and was happy with it until I left it in a cab and 30 seconds later It was not in the cab, Anyhow, it has a 10X optical zoom and it has Dolby sound and "DVD quality recording" It takes a SDHC card. Relatively inexpensive, but from Andi's description, it might bear looking into.
Lynn
PS It fits in the palm of your hand, and the screen pivots in multiple directions.