Farss gave you very good advice. Another major concern is drop outs - they will be catastrophic. On the subject of record speed, you will learn to your dismay that even VCRs made by your camera's manufacturer will often struggle to play your footage. Tape is cheap, particularly the non-DVCAM/HDV stuff. For the buck or two (less than a triple latte for sure) you are going to cause yourself a lot of needless pain.

Peter

So if i am capturing to a laptop at the same time and just using the tape to keep the camera running the full 2 hours I am "taping" then there is no loss? I use the footage off the laptop and have the tape as a back up ofr to give direcly to the client if they request.

Well if you're recording to HD you don't need to keep the tape in the camera of course but sure wouldn't hurt I guess and in that scenario it's probably acceptable. However no way would I give an LP tape to a client, they'll probably have all sorts of issues playing it out, make a dub from the HD, splitting it over two tapes (or more).
Can I suggest if you need to record more than 60 minutes to tape buy a DSR-11. Yes you can, with a little help from a friend, even run them off battery.
Bob.

I don't care what they do with the tapes. the problem is my camera shuts off ofter 5 minutes of idling, so if im not recording it thinks im not using it. They are controled information seminars the government does and they need the originals so I don't release information. "That makes no sense as its on the copmuter" you say? Well they keep that too until I'm finished. Then they buy me a new external hard drive and keep the one with the work on it. It is quite a good set up as I will never have a hard drive failure with new drives about every 2 months. The down side is they are pretty boring.

...my camera shuts off ofter 5 minutes of idling...

If you can do it, leaving the tape door open is one way to "trick" the camera into not shutting down.

Mike

With both of my cameras the timeout only occurs if there is a tape installed. Without a tape inserted, even if i close the door, the camera will stay on indefinately. The annoying thing is that on one of the cameras the microphone only works if there is a tape installed. Good grief! I'd like to find the engineer who made that decision and give him a few pointed words.

Don't blame the engineer, for sure someone in marketing thought it'd make a great feature.
Bob.

Probably a required feature by the department that sells tapes

To each his own, I guess. I began shooting LP 4 years ago and have had maybe 3 or 4 dropouts in the several hundred tapes that have been recorded so far. Much of the stuff I do runs about an hour, and any shooter can relate that "sinking feeling in the stomach" feeling as he watches the tape counter approach 0 and the show continues. So having 90 minutes to work with is a real help.

As for inter-camera exchange, I have exchanged tapes between my own two miniDV cameras, a few other miniDV cameras, and two TV stations with rack-mounted miniDV players--no problems.

The fact that the tracks are closer together (and, presumably, that the s/n ratio of the data is slightly compromised) implies that an LP tape will not survive the decades as well as an SP tape. It's not an issue to me.

My suggestion: try both ways, and see for yourself. All I can say is that, with my Sony gear and generic Costco TDK miniDV tapes, dropouts and interchangeability have not ever been a problem. For me.

The camera hibernating issue has come up many times in the stop-motion capture forums I frequent. The advice I always pass on is to simply not have a tape in the camera. I have never had anyone come back and say it doesn't work, no matter what brand of camera.

This is most likely true. The reason for the hibernation is to prevent head wear more than for any other reason. No tape installed = no head wear.

i will try this leaving the tape out tomorrow and see if it works. This will save me a lot of trouble. I have an optura Xi with a new pd170 on the way. I had a friend try this with a digital 8 sony and it would still turn off.