I've put off purchasing the JVC 50 deck because of numerous complaints I've heard about it, here and elsewhere. So I am just using my HD100 camera for transfers for the time being. But there is a new Sony deck coming out, the HVR-M35, which appears to be able to playback 720 p30 and p24 as well as 1080i, through the component and HD/SDI ports if I understand correctly (but not the Firewire port). Unfortunately I doesn't look like it does 72060p. However, it doesn't have any RS-422. Feeding into an IO HD (which doesn't have Firewire, so I couldn't use FW machine control), would that mean I would have to get some kind of LANC (which the M35 does have) to 422 converter? (And if so, would that be any good?). Or maybe I should just get the JVC Focus Enhancements harddrive recorder and forget tape transfers all together?

Any thoughts? Thanks

you can try setting the deck port to DV mode, and using standard FW deck control to run the deck. this can be done with the JVC.

the BR-HD50 has a few quirks between its FW and 422 control. for example, in DV mode, it will assemble edit onto a mini 60 tape, but won't with 422 control. crazy or what ? so if I master a HD program to DV for a local TV station, I have to use the FW port for deck control while using Y/C to send in the down converted HD to tape. should be able to do this via 422.

Yeah, you will still need an HD-SDI capture card to grab the HD100 footage from that new Sony deck.
Is it that difficult to make a deck that can play HDV1 and HDV2 formats?