I appreciate the tips. The camera weighs almost 5 pounds and the system that I am looking at is the Servo city PT785-S. (http://www.servocity.com/html/pt785-s_pan___tilt_system.html)
I have used joystick controlled cameras and they just aren't intuitively obvious to the average videographer, and in my application it has to be smooth. Yes, with practice an operator can get good with the joystick, but after using a joystick camera system weekly for two years (local cable channel), I still can't make camera moves as silky smooth as I can with a camera on a tripod.
With a closed system I can add a lot of dampening in the controller to make the movements slower - smoother. The PID loop in the hobby servos responds too fast. I guess this may be an ambitious project, but heck, I have plans to add an IR "follow me" detector so that the person on stage will be followed by the camera. You can't get lazier than that.
What I don't know is what the feedback looks like from the servo motors - so I ordered one (servo, not the whole pan/tilt system) to experiment with. I was kind of hoping that I wasn't reinventing something someone else already made.