CompuServe Messages

Paul, <I thought I had decided on 3/4" SP, but have been getting a lot of pressure to consider staying in Hi-8, now that the Hi-8 9850 has been announced. Any comments?> The main thing you need to be concerned about with Hi8 as an editing medium would be the dropouts. The small physical size of the tape itself will present an unusually high incidence of d/o that in my view would be both unavoidable and unacceptable. With the 3/4" format you have much less of a tendency for d/o and a standardized supply of tape from many sources, Hi-8 may not catch on as well as we all hope, leaving you with a dilema down the road both in shortage of parts for repair and the tape suppliers. I realize 3/4SP is still a "color under" format, but by usiing either a Y358 dub in/out mod, or a decent transcoding tbc, you will yield more than acceptable results doing your aquisition transfer from Hi8, and still maintain a wide base of parts in the channel for service and repair and many sources for tape. I fully support your decision to aquire in Hi8 or even S, but I strongly urge you to take a second look at 3/4SP, especially if you are planning to use Toaster as a switcher (remember it's a composite only beast) there is a lot of decent used gear out there at very reasonable prices, especially if you take an existing 3/4 editor and have it modified to SP (that costs under 1k).