Sounds suspeciously like $500 a spool speaker wire gives you better audio.

Funny story:

Way back in the distant past I worked for major wine producer. It was a time when cooking with wine was more popular in the late 60's early 70's. So to increase sales the marketing department came up with a more fancy label and added the words "cooking wine" to several popular types.... instant 20% increase in sales.

Oh... the wine came from the same production run. They only changed the labels, not even the bottle design. Buyer beware of marketing hype. Its all over the place.

Sounds suspeciously [sic] like some people don't know what they're talking about.

Jay

Sounds suspeciously (sic) like another I'm the expert, you're not comment sadly oh so typical to this forum when it comes to certain topics.

Geez... we're so lucky, just imagine, forum members that have the technical "expertise" to discuss the finer points of video tape production without ever stepping inside the factory and of course the "legal options" on copyright issues and related matters from the guy that admits he isn't an attorney.

This forum is so entertaining on many levels.

Now if anybody wants my "expert" opinion on either Dunkin Donuts or Crispy Cream and related goodies, ask away, I've eaten thousands of such things.

I'd vote for Crispy Kreme, but there aren't any in this part of the city. Darn.

As for tape, I buy the generic items because they work fine, even at LP speed, with no dropouts. I get the TDK 60's in a 6-pack from Costco for $20.

If I saw dropouts or other failings I would not hesitate to get more-expensive versions, but so far they've been utterly reliable.

You won't see any differences in color accuracy because this is a digital domain; the data is simply a bitstream of 1's and 0's. As for strength, I've never heard of a broken tape, though if one did break I would first suspect the transport. I would also assume that the 80-minute miniDV tapes are thinner than the standard 60-minute ones, and would thus be somewhat more delicate (remember the old 120-minute audio cassettes?).

Finally, there is the argument that you should never mix tape manufacturers, since they use different lubricants and this can lead to transport problems. But I've also read that this was an issue many years ago, not now.

Biggest problem I've got is getting the darn shrink wrap off.

riredale/billy.....Was reading recently that Krispy Kreme has a liquid version of their doughnuts.....

What has happened to the world???? Are people really that lazy? I like their doughnuts but getting them hot and eating them is half the joy. These drinks are frozen! They say the original doughnut (one) has 220 cals and 22 grams of carbs while the 12oz drink has 440 cals and 70 carbs. Gotta start figuring how many laps around the track it will take to burn that bad boy off...............

"As for tape, I buy the generic items because they work fine, even at LP speed, with no dropouts. I get the TDK 60's in a 6-pack from Costco for $20."

You could get Sony DVM60PR for $3.00 at Tapestockonline. Great company.

Sony DVM60EX gets you an extra 2dB margin against dropouts, and a better tape mechanism. Of course that one is more than twice as much. Why not take a risk and spend the difference on doughnuts instead?

It is still a problem today to mix different brands (dry vs. wetlube) such as Sony and Panasonic. You WILL get gunk on the heads. This problem never went away.