Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony GVD800 Video Walkman

ATTENTION ALL 8mm, Hi8 and Digital8 camcorder users!

Sony does it again. Backwards compatibility. Now all those 8mm video tapes can be viewed on the GV-D800 4 inch built-in LCD screen, or externally through composite video cables, S-video cables to a TV/HDTV, VCR-VHS/Super VHSor a 4 pin FireWire (digital 520 line video and digital sound) compatible equipment like a DVD recorder (ie Philips DVDR-985 Progressive Scan Recorder/Player) or PC, or Digital8 camcorder.

Many Digital Features for Editing, Digital imaging, Zoom, HiFi Sound, tape jitter correction, create sepia - monochrome - solarize imaging, negative art to mention a few.

This allows us to look, upgrade, edit those old tapes and digital transfer to DVD burner etc. Upgrading those 16 year old 8mm/240 horizontal line analog tapes, those 10 year old hi8/400 horizontal line analog tapes to a digital format maintaining picture quality & even improving quality on some application. You can also View & Copy Digital8/520 horizontal line digital tapes via FireWire with NO SIGNAL LOSS. NOTE: to maintain this new digital quality experience you must have all necessary digital compatible equipment!P>THe GV-D800 Digital Video Cassette Recorder and 8mm, Hi8 and Digital8 Player is a great investment for backward compatibility and DVD+RW and DVD+R Recording. Imagine transferring those old tapes to fast/high resolution digital picture & sound.

This unit is tiny 2 lbs. (6 inches x 6 inches x 2 1/2 inches high) but delivers big results. Plays all 8mm analog & digital tape formats, Records only Digital8 tapes.

Base unit comes with - all cables necessary for hook-up, external power supply, 4 inch built-in high resolution color LCD Screen & 76 page Owners Manual.

This is for the serious 8mm videophile who wants to enter the Digital8 world with a lasting versatile system. Move it to a DVD recorder or PC DVD burner. This is expensive but the 520 line digital picture and digital hifi sound is awesome. Enjoy!

If you are using Hi8 and/or Digital 8 then this VCR will be useful to you. The other guys pretty much summed up the features. I bought mine about 3 years ago. I use it to input video to my editing computer to save wear and tear on my cameras. It's also capable of editing but I do all that with the PC. You could just connect it to a TV and use it for 8mm playback. The quality is good and it's got inputs/outputs for everything. I am glad someone makes a VCR for the 8mm formats. I highly recommend it!

First, I am very happy with the purchase & delivery - It was very prompt and packaged well. I will order from this Amazon partner again as a result.

Second, the Sony GVD800 has worked flawlessly and the $$ I spent doesn't seem to matter after I had a chance to see my older 8mm video memories.

I was worried that the GVD800 wont be offered for very much longer and I bought it as my old 8mm camcoder no longer works. It's very easy to use and I am happy with the quality. My older 8mm video tapes worked without any issues and I can now transfer them to modern media (e.g. DVD). I would recommend the model which has the video screen rather than the one without the screen which is approx. $100 less. Otherwise, you will be dependent on an external display of some type.

If you need or want one of these, don't wait.

I've a professional musician/producer and recording engineer for quite a while and have only started to dabble with audio to picture and video editing/production. I have a long way to go, but this product is perhaps my best purchase in this area to date. I needed a solution for transferring analog VHS and Hi-8 video to my digital audio workstation ("DAW") for editing in Sony Vegas. I have a Miglia DV Director's Cut Take 2, but it was never 100% reliable because (according to friend who was a drummer in my old bands and is a professional video editor) the video signal would loose synch with my DAW. He recommended a "video stabilizer" but he said there were no guarantees because there could be other issues. He said that the best solution would be to get an "inexpensive" camcorder with a video input for dubbing to DV and then transferring the dub to my DAW.

Inexpensive is a relative term for him -- he's got a $500k+ video editing suite. I place most of my $$ into higher end audio gear. So I didn't want to spend more than $500, if possible and the camcorders with this feature seemed to be in the $1000+ range. I did a ton of research and finally stumbled across this product. I've had the unit for only 2 days so far. But, it seems like it's suiting my needs very well. Recording from analog sources and cheap media has worked without a hitch. No drop outs and the resulting raw AVI file looks identical to the source tape. Now that it's in my system I know that I can process the image and (particularly) the sound and burn DVDs. I bet anyone who is in the business of transferring wedding and occasion videos from the 1980's and 1990's would love this thing.

Operation is very intuitive. I only checked the manual after starting my initial recording to Digital Hi8 tape from an old analog camcorder circa 1994.

My only concern at this point is the longevity of the availability of blank media and head cleaning tape. It looks like Sony introduced this deck around 1999 or 2000. So, I suspect that in about another 3-5 years the availability of blank media will become more difficult. Even mini-DV is on its way out, though I suspect that the mini-DV format will be around for another 10 years before the tapes become MIA.

So, my plan is to stock up on media and head cleaning tape so that I can have a 10 year run with the unit until it wears out. I don't have a lot of personal stock that needs to be transferred, but I know that over the years some of my music clients will have footage that they want transferred. So hopefully I'll get a return on the investment. Great product for the lower-end of the video production market.

I would rate this 5 stars if the unit had additional digital i/o (either video or audio) other than the firewire port. But I guess that it would have added to the cost.

I ordered this machine to record my old 8 mm tapes of my kids. It operates quite easily out of the box. The picture on the LCD was nice and clear and it connected to my TV with ease. It looks like a high quality product and the price was good. I am very happy with it so far.