You can buy a JVC SR-VS30U DV-SVHS deck that will take your mini-DV casettes and connect to you PC via Firewire for about $900 in the LA area.

I bought one about a month ago and it worked fine until one morning it failed to turn on. It is currently being repaired by JVC under warranty.

Hard to recommend something that breaks down within 3 weeks but then again it does do the the job when it is functioning. I am actually quite happy with the performance and my only real complaint about the unit (ignoring the reliability issue) is the foolish placement of the fragile Firewire connector on the front panel right next to the On/Off swithch.

Good DV decks are much different to camera trasnports which is why they COST. If you'll only ever have to capture tapes from your own camera(s) pretty well anything will do.
Personally I find it enough of a nightmare getting tapes in/out of the Tonka Toy cameras as it is. Just did that yesterday. Trying to pickup the camera with the f/wire and power cables connected, turn the thing upside down to change tapes, yuck!

If you haven't noticed by now, we live in a throw away economy, especially when it comes to electronics. It's hard to believe mfgrs can sell some of these things and still make a profit. It drove me crazy last week to spend $100 for a 4 yr warranty on a $300 32" Sharp TV, but having just thrown out a 20" "Advent" TV from Best Buy that died after 4 months, I figured I'd better do it, since I certainly would not bother to pay for a repair, either.

Since sooooooooooo many more consumers will buy a camcorder than a deck, the cost per unit for camcorders is much lower than the prices for decks could ever be, so you're probably not paying much for the lens (esp on an inexpensive cam) or the LCD screen. Plus, I don't necessarily think they'd put a much better quality head in a deck that would sell for that low a price (again, due to economies of scale).

I'm still using a 7 yr old Panasonic miniDV camcorder as my "deck" (my actual camcorder is a GL2 which has never been connected to my PC).

"if Panasonic, Sony or JVC came out with a very basic DV deck at around $400-$700 they would have an instant winner."

Panasonic did -- and discontinued it!

My AG-DV1000 cost $800 brand new, is built like a tank, has audio level controls, front-panel timecode display, two complete sets of outputs, reads DVCAM, does analog to firewire conversion, and has never failed me.

So, why, why did Panasonic, in their infinite wisdom, kill it in favor of their wretched JVC-built offering?

Thanks all!

you gave me some things to think about, and a few things to perhaps look at.
farss, that is a big part of the problem, picking up the camera and fliping it over, constatnly unpluggin and plagging back in, etc...becuse of what we do the camera is plugged in and unplugged a lot...part of it is the "Tonka Toy" camera problem..that should change soon...

any way, thank you all for your thoughts and helping me think through the situation.
ben

And not mentioning that plugging/unplugging actually wears these tiny little connections that cost us fairly big bucks to repair considering what they are: bl++dy jacks!...

I'm currently using a TRV-33 as a DV deck- I purchased it just for that purpose. I'll still probably purchase a DSR-11 as I know videographers (who have a large workflow) that use cheap mini-dv cams as decks and they break-down all the time....they aren't meant to be used as a deck. Decks do, indeed, have tougher components that are meant to last longer. They also are more forgiving about tape alignment.

It all depends on what your using it for. If your a professional and have a fairly large workflow it's worth getting a good deck.

Hold the phone!

Are you guys saying that I can take the tape out of my Sony VX2000 and pop it in a cheap $300 camera like a Sharp Sharp VL-Z1U or a JVC GR-D33 and capture and print to tape in Vegas?!?!

Any current camcorder with a Firewire connection will work?

. .yes . ..

It's only digital stuff . . go on knock yerself out!

.. . can't you just hear the pennies dropping all over the place .. ;-)

PTT you have to see if the cammie takes DV-in though .. yeah?

Grazie

Cpt Video,

Yes, it's true. Think of it this way... a Notepad text file will be exactly the same when copied onto your machine whether it comes from a floppy, an old 386 laptop hard drive or a dual processor 64 bit processor workstation (because it's digitally identical).

When the DVX100 came out, I seem to recall a little module that looked like the deck part of the camera without the lens and was being pushed as a little deck...anyone else remember that?
I also seem to recall a little MINI DV deck thingy that actually fit right into the from of your computer's box. It took up a drive bay like any floppy or cd rom disk drive would. I thought THAT would be cool.
Another thought, as these "flash memory" card's capacities get higher and higher, 5 - 10 - 20 gigs, that's were I see a possible route for home video editing going. Think of it, camcorders that shoot digial with no tape at all...just memory cards that have no moving parts. Take the card outta your camcorder, pop it into the multi reader in the front of your computer and your groovin.

Next couple years is gonna be very cool for desktop video production. I just hope all the manufacterers can agree on some standard. Fingers crossed.

>>>When the DVX100 came out, I seem to recall a little module that looked like the deck part of the camera without the lens and was being pushed as a little deck...anyone else remember that?<<<

I don't remember that one but JVC does have a new DV/HDV deck that is pretty spiffy. CU-VH1US-P

>>>I also seem to recall a little MINI DV deck thingy that actually fit right into the from of your computer's box. It took up a drive bay like any floppy or cd rom disk drive would. I thought THAT would be cool.<<<

I think that was from Sony - but I am not 100% sure. I remember looking at it and asking around but there were too few people using it at the time. It was sort of like the tape back up devices, pretty much the exact same concept except it was for Mini-DV.

>>>Another thought, as these "flash memory" card's capacities get higher and higher, 5 - 10 - 20 gigs, that's were I see a possible route for home video editing going. Think of it, camcorders that shoot digial with no tape at all...just memory cards that have no moving parts. Take the card outta your camcorder, pop it into the multi reader in the front of your computer and your groovin.<<<

Panasonic introduced a 3 ccd, 24p model at NAB this year. It was a prototype and it has a built in 16:9 aspect ratio monitor so it may have native 16:9 ccd's. It records direct to the SD card and supposedly has no moving parts...ie: motors for tape transport, because there is no tape. No price but I guess the Pani people said it would be "slighty higher than the DVX". So maybe that would be the same as, or slighty less than, Cannon's new XL-2.

filmy link aint working right for me .. you mean this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=321741&is=REG

B&H was the first place i saw this ..

Grazie

yes, that is the same. The direct link works fine for me, I just tried it and it took where it was supposed to - but in case anyone else is having a problem clicking the direct link in my above post the URI for cutting and pasting is: http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101457

filmy - it's working now . . gremlins in the UK !

Nice piece of kit ..

Grazie