Is miniDV a HUGE step from Hi8 as far as quality, if you think yes please explain.?

Answer 1

If you are talking about regular Hi8 there is a huge difference. For one regular Hi8 video is analog, MiniDV is digital. The digital signal maintains the picture quality that Hi8 will not. You can use a firewire from the MiniDV camera to download the video and audio from the camera to your computer for editing, making DVD's or whatever. A regular Hi8 camera records at a resolution of 400 lines. A digital Hi8 can go up to 500 lines. And a MiniDV starts at 500 lines of resolution. The MiniDV tapes are smaller but typically a little more expensive. However, the digital format of the MiniDV allows easier transfer to other formats and copying without the generation loss experienced with the other formats. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The biggest improvement that any digital systems offers over Hi8 is in color resolution. Hi8, Video8, Super VHS and Regular VHS all have the same very poor color definition. If you record sharp computer generated graphics on any of these analog systems, you will notice that color shifts are just a kind of smear on playback. Hi8 has 400 lines of luma resolutions BUT only 80 lines of chroma resolution, something they rarely mention in the spec sheet. Analog systems are based on modulated color subcarriers, which are not needed for digital. Playback of digital is rock steady, but analog playback, without TBC equipment, kind of rocks all over the place, which is the main reason that "copied" tapes played so poorly. And finally miniDV handles audio as 48k sampled uncompressed digital, which is better than HiFi analog audio, and far superior to linear audio tracks.