Yes, MiniDV is name of the tape, and the codec is DV (often referred to as DV25).

More essentially than resolution, DV is either 4:2:0 PAL or 4:1:1 NTSC, and sacrifices color data. Like DVD, PAL is alternating halved data, while the NTSC is quartered. That's the primary reason that DV for NTSC looks so terrible, when used as a VHS conversion format, and throws out 50% of the color data on the tape (which was already not great to begin with).

Furthermore, using DV as a conversion method was not really part of the original intention of the format. The intension was better quality shooting, longer record time, smaller (cheap!) cameras. The conversion aspect was a hair-brained idea by Canon(?) to sell camcorders ("convert your old VHS to longer-lasting DV tapes!", which was BS), followed by Canopus making outright DV boxes without it being in the camera. And Canopus was all about marketing, with FUD like "audio lock" and charging the same prices as a camera without the benefit of it also begin a camera.

HDV was a DV hack to attempt to sell more of the dying DV format for the HD generation, but failed because it was viewed as "old tape" by most consumers in the middle of a DVD/disc/tape-less era. HDV was not even true 1080p, and had the weird interlaced 1440x1080 resolution. As with DV, there were variants, mostly used by broadcast/studio and not consumers.

I understand broadcasters also go no further than 1080i it's depressing to know that all :)
Knowing also the studios only leave 2K after post to upscale to expensive 4K UHD BluRay discs
Why buy 4K tv....

I guess you know that you can Copy (Capture) DV video from miniDV camera directly to a Firewire IEEE1394 card without using ADVC 300. You need a converter like Canopus only for Analog video capture.

Yes, i do have a Panasonic miniDV camera but i used it "then" not as much i did use a Hi8 camcorder, for the miniDV i need to search for it's powersupply, the Hi8 isn't working anymore due to rubber failure :(
I keep an eye out in local thrift shops...
or my brother can help me out with his 2nd hand Digital8 camcorder but he lives not near me,
i'm not in a hurry now, have enough VHS material to look through, i think i have a good combination now to transfer vhs, found some usefull tips, and i understand it's even an profession archival ocupation judging some of the guides i found all over the internet.

HDV was devepoped by JVC (and others) as a way to get higher resolution using the MinDV/DV tape format. In the 1440x1080 mode it used non-square pixels (as does the SD signal) to fill the 16x9 screen, used MPG2 compression, and provided an improved image over DV and the 720P line version. However, it is not as good as "full HD."

Camera head quality was always an issue with VHS, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi8, DV, Digital8, etc. Prosumer gear usually did better than the consumer gear. (Digital8 camcorders often were the most disappointing compared to the format's potential.)

The ultimate goal is the best image to the final user/viewer - sort of. That depends on the signal path, from the subject lighting, the lens, image sensors, encoding/modulation for recording, the recorder, recording media, playback system, decoding the recording, display, and the viewing environment.

In the interest of cost savings (and maximizing profit and sales) consumer systems were designed to provide an image that was acceptable to most people when used with currently available supporting technologies; i.e., why provide a 1400 line resolution consumer market sources when currently available displays only supported 400 lines. A 97% solution. The remaining 3% wanted something better.

Yes, Looking back, you can't compair old technology with todays standard, even now there are some good sensor chips available, it started with Vidicon tubes, Saticon tube, which had less streak effect, (cometh tail?)
CMOS CCD, i believe CMOS is still widely used.
I guess you need to be satisfied at a certain point because i notice different quality of recordings i have, due to the broadcast or due to VCR used, HiFi PCM sound was a real game changer, i only have few SuperVHS recordings.

Don't some cable sources and streaming services provide 4K now. Broadcasters will do it when there is sufficient demand and 4K sets out there to make it worth their while in terms potential advertising revenue. In any case the upscaling in the 4K sets can provide a subjectively more pleasing image from HD material than conventional large screen HD sets.

I would expect that any Macbook that can capture from a Sony MiniDV camcorder can capture from a ADVC 100 or 300. The ADVCs were designed to look a lot like like a Sony camcorder to a firewire device.

Each sensor technology had its strengths, and weaknesses. CMOS appears to be most common now, and it all but elrminated the vertical smear from bright sources common the CCDs, adding its motion skew, which may be less objectionable.

Netflix and sorts are internet streaming services on settop boxes or smart tv's
Otherwise it's a bandwith problem, and people are still used to the smooth-ness of interlaced.
btw.. less bandwith is more tv channels...

The whole analog-to-MiniDV idea was likely because Apple only really supported DV capture out of the box in MacOS X and their applications (iMovie and Final Cut). Analog capture devices were very poorly supported in the early years of OS X and documentation to develop drivers for them were very..... eh....limited to say the least. Technically this was the domain of QuickTime, but Apple was really pushing the DV route.

Windows users always had a well defined (albeit buggy) driver interface for video capture cards (Video for Windows and later DirectShow).

HDV wasn't a bad format (I have shot with a HDV camcorder) and worked well at the time. It predated commonplace 1080p video and dirt cheap flash memory and served a need at the time. Once flash got cheap, tape formats died pretty quickly.

And DV25 was a good compromise for its era. It provide a format that could be edited on commonly available computers. It provided a significant improvement in image quality over VHS/S-VHS/8mm/Hi8/Beta in terms of effective bandwidth and S/N. (Often the associated camera head didn't take full advantage of its potential.)

Products like the ADVC line provided a method to readily bring the old format analog video into the digital realm and feed a NLE or dump to DVD without a lot of fuss and muss. A lot of folks found it "good enough" for their purposes. But restoration is a different game.

One wouldn't do a multi-step image editing and color grading process storing the intermediate step results back to VHS and then feed that VHS to the next step. Similarly today one would find it better not to store the intermediate steps to DV25 but to use a lower loss format. The reason being the image flaws (processing artifacts and noise) introduced at each step are cumulative and will rise above the thresholds of acceptability that drive the design of the various formats, very quickly in the case of VHS.

Most old PC's can download from a DV device because of the nature of the file, it's compressed, and the the datarate is not that high over the firewire connection, CMOS has indeed that "motion skew" disadvantage, the so called rolling shutter, one picture is made from multiple "shutter" openings, so fast movements look "weird"

For me, that's the main issue.

I don't use the "O word" very often (outdated), as we're talking about videotapes from decade past, using tech from at least a decade ago for the best conversion of it. So in that aspect, the old stuff isn't always outdated. But DV is.

I always have to remind people that it was created for the era of Pentium III computers (when Pentium II was still on many households). Back when a 500mhz CPU was cutting edge fast, hard drives were measured in MB/megabytes, and 512 MB RAM was cost-prohibitively huge. The need for DV faded with the lossless capturing that was born a mere 5 years later, the era of the Pentium 4, 100 GB drives, and 1gb RAM. Even considering that holdovers kept their aging/failing PIII computer for another 5 years, by 2005 DV should have been an extinct format for conversion, as nobody had a functional PIII by then (not just "turn on", but usable for work or play, modern software/OS). And aside from Canopus pushing the ADVC line to make $$$, not because it was quality, it was entirely defunct.

As a shooting format, it was retired by 2010s. Or should have been. It belonged in a shooting bag about as much as VHS-C/Hi8 cams did.