Digital8 or MiniDV?
Mar 13 '01 (Updated Jul 28 '01)
The Bottom Line In choosing a Digital camcorder, MiniDV seems to be the way to go, while Digital8 can offer a way to save.
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It was clear early on that MiniDV was the industry standard for digital camcorders. For the most part, it still is. Sony shook up the industry a little with their introduction of Digital8 though.
Digital8 and Mini DV are nearly identical in their resolution and picture quality. The main difference is the tape format used. MiniDV utilizes a completely new type of digital tape. Digital8 can record on plain old 8mm or Hi-8 tape. When Digital8 was first introduced, this was a major advantage since you could buy 8mm tapes for about $2 each. This is becoming less of an issue as Mini DV tape prices fall. Sony recommends using Hi-8 tapes which are more expensive than plain 8mm. I've found that there is almost no difference in picture quality between the two types of tape. I always use regular inexpensive 8mm tapes and save my money.
The main advantage of Digital8 now is backward compatability with 8mm. If you have a lot of old plain 8mm family vacation type tapes laying around, you can play them in the Digital8 camcorder.
Both Mini DV and Digital8 have the standard IEEE1394 PC connectors for digital editing on a PC. The major disadvantage of Digital8 is that if the format doesn't survive, and your camcorder breaks down, you'll have no way to play your Digital8 tapes.
The picture quality on the Digital8 format is pretty good and in some ways, better than some Mini DV camcorders. However, Sony uses only a 460,000 pixel CCD where some Mini DV camcorders use a 640,000 pixel CCD. The specifications in the Sony manual also state that the effective number of pixels being used for the main picture are 290,000. This is just slightly higher than regular 8mm and VHS-C. The rest of the pixels are probably used for the electronic image stabilization and the digital zoom functions.
In the end, it all comes down to what you want out of a camcorder. Even though I bought a Digital8, I would recommend MiniDV without hesitation to anyone inquiring about the two. If you really want to save money on buying tapes, Digital8 provides a way to do that. /the savings aren't extremely significant though unless you buy a lot of tapes.
You can usually buy the lower end Digital8 models a little cheaper than Mini DV though.
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