chip or no chip for Sony excellence miniDV tape?

[billo 0]

OK so I've searched through the forum here and found that the Sony excellence tapes are about as good as it gets for all-around shooting, especially on a Sony PC camcorder. I'm checking out the Sony webpage and see 3 types of tapes - premium, excellence, and excellence w/ integrated chip:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start;sid=AfvW-iVmCfHW7WXbBADc8WppRxSOXw2PcEs=?CategoryName=dcc_DIAccessories_DIBlankMedia_MiniDV&Dept=dcc

The forums have a lot of talk about the excellence tapes, but none really go into the chip on the tape. I found the tape w/ chip for $12.49, and w/o chip for $7.49 on B&H.

The Sony page really only mentions bookmarking as a feature of the chip. Does it have any other features, like fewer dropouts than the excellence tape w/o the chip?

Any thoughts on the differences between the two, and why you use one over the other? Or are the features of the chip not justified for the extra $5?

Thanks!
B

[quade 4]

The chip makes it possible for you to do a limited amount of indexing and titles and store them with the tape.

Early on I used them because I thought it might be a nice feature, but for me the costs outweigh the benefits by quite a large margin.

The chip has nothing to do with the actual tape quality, which, BTW, is properly named.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billo 0]

Excellent...(or should i say "excellence..."?)

Exactly the input i was looking for. Thank you!!!

b

[motherhucker 0]

Quote

OK so I've searched through the forum here and found that the Sony excellence tapes are about as good as it gets for all-around shooting, especially on a Sony PC camcorder. I'm checking out the Sony webpage and see 3 types of tapes - premium, excellence, and excellence w/ integrated chip:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start;sid=AfvW-iVmCfHW7WXbBADc8WppRxSOXw2PcEs=?CategoryName=dcc_DIAccessories_DIBlankMedia_MiniDV&Dept=dcc

The forums have a lot of talk about the excellence tapes, but none really go into the chip on the tape. I found the tape w/ chip for $12.49, and w/o chip for $7.49 on B&H.

The Sony page really only mentions bookmarking as a feature of the chip. Does it have any other features, like fewer dropouts than the excellence tape w/o the chip?

Any thoughts on the differences between the two, and why you use one over the other? Or are the features of the chip not justified for the extra $5?

Thanks!
B

That depends on whether or not you value any of the worthless features the chip tapes give you. In my mind--Chip tapes=$10-15,
non chip=$3.49...decision made.
mh

[slayer21016 2]

I used the chip tapes at first but you don't need the chip, but stick with the excellence tapes though, "you get what you pay for". I would suggest if you go to DVCAM or DVC-Pro that you use the 16K chip tapes for the extra cataloging features it offers.

Scott