On Thu, 03 Feb 2000 16:30:42 GMT, Mark Gomez wrote:

>Regarding picture quality, is it safe to assume that the lowest grade Mini
>DV camcorder still outweighs the highest grade Hi8/Digital 8 camcorder?

No.
The medium potential is higher with mini-DV/D8,
but that doesn't mean the execution is always
optimized...
The best Hi-8 can definitely look better than
the worst D8, or even the worst mini-DV (same
data format for both the digital formats, but
the D8 camcorder "front end" is likely worse
than the mini-DV camcorder "front end").
The best mini-DV, though, is likely to look
better than the best Hi-8, though the "look"
of the picture may be different - and for
some the greater resolution and better color
of NTSC mini-DV may be offset by mini-DV
compression artifacts...
When it comes to relative freedom from dropouts
and from losses from copying, D8/mini-DV
certainly has an advantage over Hi-8 (or
any other analogue format).