archiving: mini-DV, DVD or hd? The Sequel

[Malcolm Hamilton]

O.K., here's the second part of my missive, starting with a contribution
from Phil, on the subject of a 'stand-alone' DVD recorder:

>>From:  Phil A. Lefebvre
. and stand-alone DVD recorder may be best.  They can be found for under
$700 in the US, and are getting better every day.  You can hook your Hi-8
camera and directly dub to DVD disks.  They can hold up to 6 hours of video
per disk, thought the quality really drops if trying to cram more than 2
hours per disk.

This sounds easy to use, but comes back to the question of compression.
Will these DVD-recorders allow me to record the Hi-8 footage as a DV file???
As much as I'd love to squeeze more on a DVD than a paltry half-hour, I
think I now understand that if I want DV quality, a half-hour is all I can
ask of a DVD-R.  If I go even for one hour's worth (let alone two), quality
will suffer, right?
Especially when you consider that when I do want to do, eventually, is
editing, and that I'll want to edit the stuff as DV... if I've compressed it
more than that, then maybe it's a big deal to de-compress it back to DV???
Can anyone advise on this?

Phil goes on - -

>>Another option is hard drive archiving.  I figure the cost of a DV tape and
DVD-R blank are about half the price of hard disk storage, but is much less
convenient if you plan to edit some day... a HD takes up less space, and is
arguably more robust than tape, and maybe a DVD-R.

This may be a good idea, but does anyone know if, in the same way we can be
pretty sure that hard drives will get bigger and cheaper, there might be
DVD-Rs, right around the corner, that will hold an hour's worth of DV
footage, instead of a half-hour?

And if I wait for something bigger, faster and cheaper, will some of my Hi-8
tapes, which date back eleven years, have suffered for my delay?

Thanks again, everyone, for your advice, and apologies for being so
long-winded!
Malcolm