You can record to both but you will wear out your heads using Metal Partical DV tape instead of professional Metal Evaporated tape. It's a completely different tape formula - nothing like consumer DV tape at all. Choose a brand model and stick to it. Otherwise you will have problems.

Metal Evaporate Tape is the way to go for HDV for several different reasons:

You can record either HDV or standard-definition DV on a MiniDV tape - they use the same bitrate, so as far as the digital information is concerned, the HDV format is not more demanding than DV.

Having said that, when things go wrong a bit error (or dropout) in HDV material can have a much bigger impact than with DV. Bottom line is that many people invest in higher-grade tape for HDV to reduce the probability of dropouts, and those higher-grade tapes are often sold as "HDV" tapes.

Last update: 02:30 PM Saturday, April 28, 2007