I have a large volume of DV tapes I have to transfer. What would be a good deck to get for this that would be able to handle the wear? I don't need it to record.
The last deck I bought is a Panasonic DV2500 and the cost at the time was around $1800.00. Sony also had one at about the same price. I just checked B&H catalog. They have quite a few listed but no prices.
Depending on how much you're going to be doing this, and how your money supply is, it might be easier and cheaper to be a camera that records dv and use that. They are really down in price right now - down to a few hundred.
Depending on how many tapes constitutes a "large volume", you might consider renting a deck. It may cost less than buying a deck and if you wear the heads out, it isn't your problem.
Call around and see if you can find a Sony DSR-11 for rent. Sony doesn't make the DSR-11 anymore, but it is probably the perfect deck for your project.
2- For me, it seems to make sense to just use a cheap consumer DV camera to do the job.
Though if you have material shot with different cameras, then you might get dropouts transferring the tapes with cheaper VTRs/cameras/etc. The head alignment on cameras is different, so sometimes using something other than the original camera to transfer the tape doesn't work that well (dropouts). The more expensive VTRs may do a better job at transferring tapes without dropouts.
Then again, a $4k+ DVCPRO deck won't do a very good job at transferring mini-DV tapes (probably sometimes worse than a consumer miniDV camera). The difference between the DVCPRO and mini-DV formats is probably what causes problems, and the price tag does not overcome that.
i've used DVCPro deck's with min-DV's but you need the miniDV adapter & can't record to the miniDV. Besides that I had no issues, but I've been told issues can develop. We killed all the decks with DVCPro tapes though. :D
Just make sure the deck includes a firewire hookup. some don't have that come standard (especially older ones) & it can cost hundreds to add it.