I'm not much of a videographer, only using my video camera a few times per year. My video camera is a Canon ZR-10 (the entry level model from about 5 years ago). The last time I used it (around Christmas) it worked fine.

I had always used the same brand and model of tape because I had read that using lots of different tapes would be bad for the camera.

A couple of weeks, I went to Sea World. I went to Best Buy and bought a few new tapes from a brand I had never used before. I cleaned the heads first using a head cleaning tape.

The first tape was fine and we got lots of good footage from it. The second tape was full of drop outs. Basically, the entire tape was messing up, with broken audio and artifacts in the video.

My wife then went on another trip the next week. Since it was the only tape we had on hand, I used the 3rd (and last) tape from that package, but I made sure to clean the heads first. She came back from the trip and this tape is even worse than the second tape. Broken audio and broken video.

Is it due to some weird tape/camera interaction? Or is my 5 year old camera on its last legs?

If it will help, I can upload a sample to Youtube to show the problems with the tape.

My advice is to try the brand of tape you used prior and test some footage. That should give you a good indication.