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DV - The abbreviation for Digital Video

Referring to a common video format that encodes video digitally onto tape. DV tapes include, MiniDV, DVCam and DVCpro. 

HDV - High Definition Video

A format that allows video to be recorded in frame sizes of 1,280×720 or 1,440×1080 to be recorded in MPEG2 format on DV media, e.g. Mini DV and DVCAM tapes.

Firewire

Firewire is an interface port, similar to USB.  Firewire is commonly referred to as IEEE-1394 when referring to computers and DV or i.LINK when referring to digital video cameras. There are two types 6 pin and 4 pin ports.

6 Pin and 4 pin firewire ports.

Digital Video Cameras and Firewire In/Out

Although a camera may have a firewire port it may be that the port is only enabled to play footage out and not capable of receiving video back from the editing computer or another camera.

Analogue 

Refers to VHS, SVHS, VHS-C, SVHS-C, Hi8 and 8mm.

Digital Video - Hard Disk Storage

Video in DV format takes up 3.6MB of disk space per second.  This translates to 1GB of hard disk space stores 4 minutes and 30 seconds of digital video and 12.7GB of disk space stores 1 hour of footage.

A Bit of Technical Nonsense - Firewire vs. USB

In theory USB2.0 which allows data transfer at up to 480MB per second should be as fast as firewire which allows data transfer at 400MB per second. However firewire is always faster because it uses a peer to peer architecture whereas USB uses a master slave architecture.

Firewire 800 : Is the latest incarnation of firewire and as the name suggests allows data transfer rates of 800MB per second. They have started to appear on the top of the range Apple Mac computers and have not yet found their way on to digital video cameras or PCs.