Does anyone know of any cheap mini dv playback decks? All the ones I've seen are like 1300 and 1400 stg. I just looking for a deck with play, rewind and fast forward on it and it would have to have a firewire out port. My second question is what are your experiences using tape head cleaners, I'd like to hear the good, bad and ugly of these and what the best recommended one(s) are.

Thanks in advance.

The cheapest miniDV deck I know if the JVC twin deck (combined with an SVHS deck), it is cheap in every sense of the word, if you ever have to open one up (which I often do) you will find more plastic than in legoland.

Sony do a deck (the dsr11 methinks) which is a well built mindv deck for about £1200, the JVC deck is about £700, for good reason, if you are talking about buying a minidv deck then you are obviously quite serious about what you are doing and are not adverse to spending a bit of money, buy a sony and you get two years silver service support, and a quality unit, it's the only way to go.

Pay cheap, pay twice.

[MarkE19]

For a cheap, but not too plastic DV deck I suggest a cheap & chearful DV camcorder. As you are not relying on the lens etc you don't need to buy an expensive cam. After all you are just reading & transfering digital data at this stage.

DV head cleaning tapes should only be used when needed as they will cause excessive head wear if used too often as they are abrasive. Normally the cam will tell you when cleaning is required.

Mark.

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated. That's a good idea about using a cheap dv cam as your playback deck and as you say lens or image quality doesn't matter.