On Fri, 3 May 2002 01:30:21 -0700 (PDT), bigrocketman3@webtv.net (Steve McDonald) wrote:

> Be adventurous and ride the VX3 until it drops and then good luck
>in getting it fixed. It will give you a luxury ride as long as it
>lasts.
>Or, play it safer and buy a Digital8 TRV730 for a good closeout price,
>while a few are still available. The 730 will do a good job and the
>digital recording format will show some superiority to the analog one.
>Buy them both and have fun recording a direct S-Video camera output from
>the Hi-8 VX3 onto the Digital8 recorder and see what a 3-CCD Digital8
>camcorder could do if they'd just make one for us. I've recorded a
>direct camera output from my 2-CCD ED-ßeta camcorder (2/3-inch CCDs)
>onto Digital8 and the picture quality was outstanding.

I'm still kicking myself for not buying a cheap
VX3 a while back, and feeding its output to a
PC9 for recording... I suspect that a lot of the
picture artifacting I complain about in DV is not
due to the DV medium so much as to the DV-camera
encoding. I had high hopes for the VX3 producing
a noticeably smoother-with-motion image on Mini-DV
tapes - though with a picture that would be less
sharp, with less good color, and with more limited
low light range than with the best Mini-DV cameras...