#Mind's Eye
Carl, the BIG (and singular) difference between using the Exebyte drive and
ANY other tape drive is that the Abekas units ONLY work with Exebyte
drives. They're not DOS devices, so you can't use standard DOS archival
media. Due to some fortunate serendipity, the Exebyte is available as a
backup device across almost all hardware (Mac, PC, Amiga, Sun AND Abekas).
Regarding quality difference… there's no comparison. Every analog method
of getting video to tape has its associated analog artifacts. Basically,
if you've got to get the image onto tape using a frame buffer, you're going
to introduce a zillion pieces of video "garbage" into the signal. However,
when you go straight to video digitally, there are NO analog artifacts.
It's like the difference between night and day.
– G