A few years ago, I bought a Sony TRV460E digital camcorder, choosing that model because I was told it was one of only 3/4 digital 8 camcorders which were 'backwards compatible' and would play my old Hi8 analog tapes, converting them to digital info and outputting them to my Mac for editing in iMovie. It works a treat.

However, lately it has been playing up a lot and I am increasingly having to 'clean' the heads. As this 'cleaning' is, in fact, abrasive, I don't want to do much more of it and I have decided to look for a replacement.

My question: what other digital camcorders do people know about which will also play and convert into digital info analog tapes. Is it just the 3/4 I was told about (the TRV460 and TRV480 - I can't remember the other model numbers) or are there others?

Basically Sony was THE ONLY company to produce Digital 8 camcorders, and therefore the only ones to create camcorders that were backwards compatible with Hi 8. This was part of the spec, any and all Digital 8 camcorders should play back analogue Hi 8.

If you look on ebay you should be able to find one, and also I believe they even made standalone decks for Digital 8 tapes (though I have no idea whether they also played back analogue from Hi 8. However a word of warning; miniDV is probably okay for a little while but these days everything is moving to hard drive or solid state (memory cards), so if I were you I'd get a replacement Digital 8 camcorder, run those old tapes and digitize them quick smart, as soon you won't be able to even find replacement tapes.