Digital8 or Hi8 camera for Hi8 tape playback?
 

My Sony DCR-PC105E is history. I need to buy a used camcorder. I'm going to use it for playback one hundred of my recorded Hi8 tapes so I can digitalize them.
Two questions:
1. Which should I look for; a Hi8 camera or a digital8 camera (that's compatible with Hi8)? I understand that digital8 have firewire which gives better quality. However I have no firewire on my PC and I'm not interested of having it. So is there any meaning to look for a digital 8 camera If I won't use firewire?
2. Which camera would be a good choice amonge these below?
Hi8: CCD-TRV99E, CCD-TR2000E
Digital8: DCR-TRV325E, DCR-TRV330E, DCR-TRV7100E, DCR-TRV270E.

Sorry, I miswrote in my first post. It's my Sony CCD-TR805E that's broken. A Hi8-camera. No miniDV involved,

After studing I think it might be better using firewire. Instead of installing a firewire-card in my PC, can I use a firewire-USB cable?

I answer myself... no I can't just use a firewire-USC cable.

I suggest you look for a Hi8 player with an internal TBC. This may be a higher end camcorder in Hi8 or D8, or possibly a Sony Walkman VCR such as the GV-D200 (expensive). Not all D8 camcorders could play Hi8 so check carefully before you buy.

Sony offered several Hi8 VCRs as well but they are rare, pricey and not all had internal TBCs.

As with all gear of this vintage it exists on the used market and condition is uncertain at best. (FWIW My Sony EV-S7000 acts like it has failing SMD caps.)

Note that Firewire (AKA iLink and IEEE-1394) is a DV format transfer. The DV format suffers from lossy compression and this is a concern especially if you have noisy video, as was common for home video shot in poor light. An analog (s-video) capture from a quality Hi8 player may give you a better end result. On the other hand a D8 or DV recording is best ingested via Firewire.

Last time I looked Firewire cards for desktop PCs were not expensive.

Thanks for interesting answers.
I understand that digital8 has advantages. I won't become a fan of camcorders. I just want to transfer 97 Hi8 tapes to my PC, and then I will sell the camera. I have no firewire-card on my PC. I'm not interested in installing a firewire.card. Neither am I interested in buying a thunderbolt firewire-adapter as my PC have no thunderbolt.

I guess a good option would a Hi8 camera with TBC (I don't really know what it is but I understand it's good for video quality). Another option is to buy any digital8 camera that's compatible with Hi8 or just buy a Hi camera without TBC.

My Hi8 tapes are like 25-30 years old. I don't even know if they will play? I guess I should be happy if they play even though the quality wont be very high.

The used cameras I'm looking at are:
Hi8: CCD-TR2000E
Hi8 with TBC: CCD-TRV99E
Digital8: DCR-TRV325E, DCR-TRV330E, DCR-TRV7100E

Any suggestion for which to choose?

Buy a Hi8 camera for Hi8. Very often, the Digital8 (DV) cameras degrade the quality of the analog Hi8, due to forced DV compression.

Thanks. After studying the forum I understand that Mr lordsmurf knows what he talks about.

Strangely I've seen many old Hi8 cameras that sell more expensive than digital8 cameras. i thought it would be the opposite.

I personally have never had a problem with the quality of Hi8 footage transferred via the DV output of a Digital8 camcorder. Any potential quality loss is far outweighed by the inherent noise of the analog tape recording and the limited resolution of the original camcorder's CCD image sensor.

But if you think you could ever actually see the DV nasties, remember that Digital8 camcorders have composite and S-Video outputs, too, just like Hi8 camcorders. So if you do manage to set up a capture system that can deliver pristine uncompressed video, you could just use that to capture it, rather than going through FireWire.

p.s. All Digital8 camcorders which support analog Video8/Hi8 playback have a built-in TBC which works pretty well. But turn off the Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) -- it causes color trailing artifacts.

It's not "bad quality" exactly, but there often is color loss from the forced DV compression. A few models supposedly bypass the DV step, but others do not, very obviously when compared.

The cost difference in Hi8 and Digital8 is negligible, from a relative perspective. Even if the Hi8 was 2x more costly, both added together tend to have less costs than a single suggested JVC S-VHS deck.

To use crude analogy, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed" (Digital8 camera), but I wouldn't really pursue her/it either. I want the less flaky chick camera, less maintenance.

Right now I'm looking to buy/bid on either Sony DCR-TRV325E (digital8) or Sony CCD-TRV99E (Hi8 with TBC). I'm a bit unsure on which to go for.

Just a follow up.

Last night I won an auction of Sony DCR-TRV325E (digital8). Payed about 145 USD.

I was thinking about the possibilities to maybe transfer digital. My desktop has no firewire-card och Thunderbolt.

I do have a laptop, Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro 14ACN6. It has no firewire. The connections are two USB (3.2 Gen 1) Type-A-contacts and also a USB-C®-contact. Maybe a dumb question, can I use this for transfering my recordings from my camcorder? Maybe this USB-C®-contact works like Thunderbolt?

Another follow up.
I finally got the camera I bought. The seller turned out to be an a-hole. He didn't send the battery, charger or the cables. Actually he sent cables, but not cables that's supposed to use with cameras.

I had a battery that fit the camera and tested if it was working. The seller had promised it worked perfect. It turned out that the camera straight away gave error about dirty videohead.

I'm trying to get my money back. It's awful when sellers lie.

I’ve been very lucky. I just got a TRV-67, mint, not a scratch anywhere. Looks like it was never used.
Goodwillfinds. $114 plus shipping. That particular Goodwill offshoot lets you buy straight out. No bid, just buy.
Of course read the descriptions.

Hi8 VCRs are pretty interesting, but I don't know that I've seen many direct comparison to show that they are "better" than the cameras. I did ask Collin at Video99 and he says that he prefers the look of some of the high end Hi8 VCRs, so there must be some sort of difference. I would guess that most users won't be able to tell a signficant difference though. Cameras are likely to have relatively few hours on them and are less mechanically and electrically complicated. Most Hi8/D8 camcorders have relatively few electrolytic capacitors in them to go bad. Most of the Hi8 VCRs have way more components that can go bad. Unless you want a potential repair project (which I think are fun, but also frustrating), I'd say stick with a camcorder. Advantage of Firewire is basically no potential for audio sync issues. Videocaptureguide on YouTube did a few comparisons on D8 camcorders outputting over S-Video and they don't have the compression artifacts or color differences if using the S-Video out, so I don't think it goes through the same DV processing circuitry.

This is false. It's marketing from 20-25 years ago, zero truth to it. The marketing referred to "audio lock", but the person writing the marketing text had zero clue as to what it meant. Audio lock is a special feature of non-consumer DV (ie, not MiniDV aka DV25).

It varies heavily on the model. I have a camera here that definitely processes analog as DV output, and it makes sense from a mechanical technical perspective where space is a premium (shared functions).

If the digital8 camera used for playing back analog tapes over S-Video/Composite there is no DV compression, just digital processing such as TBC and DNR, If the firewire port is used there is DV compression applied.