My hard information on the format comes from Sony's web page on the format
[15 March 1999]: I made a quick visit to The Good Guys, where, among the seeming billions of 8mm and Hi-8 cameras, there sat a single lonely Digital8. Selling for $ 999, it didn't look like frightfully good value. Image quality looked mediocre at best, certainly no better than the Hi-8 cameras it replaced. I'll have to do a more detailed test at a later time, but my feeling is that MiniDV is worth the extra money.
Obviously the good news about the new format is that it will play back existing 8mm and Hi-8 tapes, and that it has analogue input to copy your existing tapes into the format. However, note that analogue inputs also exist on MiniDV cameras like the Sony TRV-900.
Jerome Maro notes that analogue inputs apparently don't exist on PAL models. I feel sympathy for our European friends on this one. :-(
I can see two sides to your ability to use Hi8 tapes in this camera. They are obviously much cheaper than dedicated digital tapes. However, some potential problems prevent me from being enthusiastic:
Digital8 is essentially the same as DV, except that it uses the more popular Hi8 tape for recording. Both platforms use the same compression-decompression technology that pass through a firewire and into an NLE system. The same software that edits and manipulates DV data can therefore be used for digital8 data as well. In terms of quality, both are capable of catching up to 500 lines of resolution. Your perception of inferiority of the digital8 format is probably more imagined than real, more based on the fact that it is has potential mass acceptance (because of backward compatibility with Hi8 and 8mmm) and therefore suspiciously lower class. If you look at the facts, you'd realize there is no basis for that suspicion.This writer may have been accurate in my perception of the format - I may well be prejudiced against it because it's "lower class". More likely, I could be prejudiced against it simply because my Canon XL1 is a very substantial investment in the MiniDV format.
However, I don't think there's any significant doubt that current Digital8 cameras do not live up to the format's potential. You can buy three-chip MiniDV camcorders; as far as I know, there are no plans to produce three-chip Digital8 units. MiniDV camcorders of similar quality to Digital8 are smaller and lighter, which is a major advantage for many consumers. Since the price difference between Digital8 and MiniDV doesn't seem to be very high at present, I think MiniDV still wins the comparison.
For those who have already bought into MiniDV, there seem to be few reasons to go with Digital8, unless you have analogue tapes that you want to copy to digital. If you do, you can use the Digital8 system as an 8mm VCR to copy your existing tapes to MiniDV, an option that wasn't available before without a (frighteningly expensive) DV VCR.
Note that, because more information in recorded in Digital8 than the older formats, the recording times are half what they are in 8mm. So, despite the large tape size, you're only getting about the same time you'd get on a MiniDV cassette. According to Jerome Maro, tape speed is only a little faster than the speed of PAL (European standard) 8mm tapes. He says that you'll get about 90 minutes on a 180 minute 8mm cassette, and compares it to the existing 80 minute MiniDV tape (which can go to 120 minutes if you're willing to risk using SP mode).
Based on available evidence, I wonder if Digital8 is enough of an advance to outperform Hi8 cameras, especially since relatively few people edit their tapes.
Conclusion: If you would normally buy a cheap 8mm camera, Digital8 is bound to make you happy. However, if you were going to buy into MiniDV, I recommend you ignore Digital8 completely. I don't think it was intended to be a semi-professional format in the mould of MiniDV.
People whose needs are akwardly between 8mm and MiniDV are likely to find the new format tempting. I predict that mass market acceptance of MiniDV will all but disappear due to the likely aggressive pricing and marketing of the new format. Because of this, I suspect this will be somewhat bad news for MiniDV users; we won't see our beloved (and often elusive) MiniDV tapes in supermarkets any time soon :-(.
Quick thoughts on Sony PCs
There would appear to be a tremendous advantage to buying a Sony PC to use along with FireWire. After all, FireWire is built into the Sony system, and it should be all integrated and ready to set up. The idea is great. Unfortunately, every time I've looked at an in-store demo of a Sony PC, it's been slow and/or unreliable. I commend Sony for doing the right thing in integrating their various product lines, and the Sony PCs look good -- but I just can't get enthusiastic about them. If anyone has anything more concrete, let me know
Comments? Questions? Drop me a line.