Glad I could amuse you. I havent the time to research all the discussion on it, apologies for beating the already dead topic with a stick.

I wish I could find the packaging that came with my Sony tapes that mentioned why their tapes had 'superior' quality and why...something to do with a 'coating' and 'wider' tape surface area.

I shot on sony cams/tapes in college, and the sony tapes wouldnt play in any other decks they had but sonys... and they told us not to put anything other than sony in the sony decks. I assumed it was a compatability problem.

When I used my sony minidv tapes on a low end minidv cam about a year ago, they'd read the sony footage but with black bars etc...while any other brand tape worked fine. I've since tried those sony tapes again-on a sony, and they work fine. So either that camera couldnt handle the tapes, or...??

Regardless of whatever 'cliche' conspiracy theories there are- I do find that there are some compatibility issues... whether it be related to brand name or not, thats another story.

so yeah. glad I can be of some use, if only to get a few chuckles ;)

Never had a problem.

I shoot with an XL-1s and a GL-2 and use Sony Excellence tapes. Recently I purchased a JVC dual MiniDV/SVHS deck for capturing/editing. I found some audio dropout and picture noise while playing back my XL-1s footage on the JVC deck. However, not every tape showed symptoms. I sent the JVC deck in for an alignment, but still had some problems after getting the deck back. The problem tapes would play without incident on my Canon cameras, so I sent the XL-1s in for alignment. I haven't yet gotten back from Canon Factory Service. Only time will tell. I AM a little befuddled as to why the problems are so inconsistent.

I havent read tru the thread just want to say I've had problems reading tapes filmed with canon using my sony equipment (vx2000 and sony mindv deck)

No problems here
 

I shoot a Sony VX2000, a Panosonic 3CCD and a Sony FX1, and run all tapes through a cheap Sharp mini DV, utilizing it as a deck. Virtually no problems, though I never shoot in LP.

I have a Canon GL1 and my dubbing house has a JVC deck. They regularly have problems playing the GL1 tapes, usually with audio. Hence, I always make an appointment to bring the camera with me so they can dub from it rather than their decks.