I believe most, but not all D8 cameras can read regular 8 tapes.

Dave T2

That sounds promising. Thanks!

My finacee's church records their youth group skits on Hi-8 and they'd like to have me do some editing. They can overnight the Hi-8 tape to me, but i don't have any way to play it. If i need to buy a camcorder for this i'd rather have a D8 as long as it will play the tapes. For that matter, i know several folks who own D8 camcorders who would probably let me borrow it for an hour when i need it. I don't know anyone around here who owns a Hi-8 camcorder though.

I have a Sony TRV350 that reads analog 8 and analog Hi-8 just fine. It only records in D-8, though. I have used both the Sony "D8" and normal off-brand Hi-8 tapes to record and I don't see any difference. As long as the tapes are new, the dropouts are very rare. The TRV350 is getting pretty low-priced, now. I've been thinking of getting another one. It also does analog-->>DV passthrough, which is great for capturing other analog video sources. Be careful: not every Sony model of D8 camera has the pass-through.

I had digital8 sony and analog8 sony. The digital8 will read analog tapes, but with some problems.The analog8 will not read digital8 tapes recorded on digital camcorder.

I have the Sony TRV-350 too and second what mcgeedo says. I had a Sony HI8 that bit the dust and bought the 350 so I could play and capture the from the HI8 tapes I had on hand then and then reuse them as D8.

We have a Sony D8 camera, when we first got it, played Hi8 with no problems, a couple months later it had a really hard time reading Hi8.

Kelly,

One of the selling points of the Digital 8 is that it can read the previously recorded 8mm tape formats. That makes it easy to digitize the old tapes. However, it won't go in reverse (Hi8 won't read digital format) so I'd save the old Hi8 recorded tapes and record the edited/digitized version back to another tape just in case you lose a project or need more of the source material.

By the way, sent you an e-mail on another issue using the address from your sample video site. Is that still working?

Randy

Randy, right. I know it can handle analog 8mm. The question is whether it can handle Hi-8. Several folks indicate that they've had success though, so that's good.

Yes, i did get your email. I'll send you my ponderings when i get back home this evening.

Chien:
When you go to purchase your Digi8 cam, you need to double check whether or not it is backwards capable. Many of the newer Sony D8 cams have notices (somewhere on the retail display or price/feature tag) stating that they will not play earlier formats (8mm and Hi-8).

It seems that the backward capable cams are becoming more rare these days.

Caruso

Chienworks,

I bought the Sony TRV-350 for the same reason. Worked great with my old 8mm tapes. (about $500 at Best Buy, but I think the price has dropped since then.)

All you have to do is to put the 'old' tapes in it, connect to your USB and capture. ( I used VF 2.0 to capture the tapes, sometimes the program did not reconize the camera, so I just turned the camera off, then on... and it usually would finally 'see' the camera.) I was amazed the the VF program controled the camera's functions... ei Stop, Play Etc..

And by the way, the '350 camera' takes pretty nice DV movies for a consumer grade camera!

Pete

I have a Sony TRV-740 (now obsolete) and it plays back hi-8 tapes taken with hi-8 camcorders fine. I had gotten it for the very reason that it can play back an old collection of hi-8 tapes I had made over the years and output in DV format for easy capture with a standard Firewire card in the PC. The only minor problem I have noticed is that there are two very small vertical black bars on the left and right edges. These are a minor annoyance but I found I could get easily get rid of these by using a tiny amount of event zoom with event pan/zoom. I thought the idea of digital 8 was a Sony invention to allow output capability in DV format with playback capability of hi-8 recorded tapes. I didn't know that some Digital 8 camcorders can't play back hi-8 recorded tapes. That's news to me

DSteve:
Next time you're in Best Buy, Circuit City or whatever electronics store you have in your area, browse the Digi8 cams. I know Best Buy lists among each cams features whether or not they will play "older" Hi8 and 8mm tapes. Of the newer cams, more do not play analog tape formats than do. Progress, I guess.

Caruso