I am only put of buying one because of the horror stories of tape transport systems I have read elsewhere.

What makes this a sensible camera for me is the ability to still shoot DV until cards come down in price and HD really takes off.

Have any of you taken a lot of DV footage with the HVX200?
How many hours is the head system good for?

One of our HVX at work has been used daily with DV tapes for quite a while now. It hasn't been treated too nicely, I can say that for sure (rough eng usage, often used by fairly unexperienced people, also with tapes re-used multiple times)
It has yet to show any problems other than a dirty head, which is normal for tape systems, and which went away after head cleaning. I'll see if I can look into the menu tomorrow and give you the exact number of hours.

Thanks very much for that Heiko.....you know yourself the dilema in trying to decide the best camera.

It is between the HVX and the EX1 for me.

the numbers would give a good indicator.

Our oldest HVX200 has 1378 drum hours (in words: one thousand three hundred and seventy eight) and still no problems. As I said before, this is with rough treatment and tapes re-used over and over...

I just looked up the EX1 - it's a very nice camera... 1/2" chips, the lens seems to be pretty good (with a full manual focus mode and an iris wheel - wow!). But as far as I understand it, it won't shoot SD at all.

Thanks a lot for that info......really gives me a good comparison from which to choose.