I am getting ready to buy up a bunch (20 hours, + or -) of tape stock to take on a trip. Ebay has loads of different offers. One Sony offer touts their blue tapes as being this year's as opposed to the red ones, which are last year's. Does anyone have any advice as to where to buy tapes? I know that Mike, you said that you buy 50+ at a time. Where do you get them?

Thank you,

Marcello

Give a look to taperesources.... http://www.taperesources.com

You can get 20 of the DVM60PRL & 1 STORAGE RACK for $89.80 or just 20 DVM60PRL miniDv tapes for 80$ (3.99 each)

We have a sponsor that has equivalent prices to Tape Resources. In fact, for a while there, they had export-packed tape, no box just the cellophane around 5 tapes at a time (still in their plastic boxes) for the lowest prices I've ever seen. I bought from them twice.

The last time I needed tapes, they didn't have those particular packages.

One note of caution on the plastic storage racks. They store the tapes incorrectly. All manufacturers recommend that tapes be stored on end. The racks store them flat, the worst possible position.

http://www.pro-tape.com

Just a word of caution. They have recently received some bad marks from a few people. Read the thread on the sponsor forum.

Stay with the brand of tapes that you've been using. Swapping brands for the sake of a few dollars isn't a good idea. WWW.thetapeguys.com had an 80cent spread between Sony's, Fuji and panasonic. Sony's were on for $4 and the others were 4.78 to 4.80. I'm not taking chances scewing up the heads ona $3000 camera for the sake of $16. As luck would have it I do use Sony so I save the $16.

This isn't a scientific study, but many report head and transport problems after swapping brands. There has been some known lubricant incompatabilities in the past.