I recently bought a used Hi8 Camera with paranormal nightvision mode and everything seem to be fine except when I tried it... the salesman sent me 3 8mm tapes which recorded fairly poor due to dirty heads so I cleaned the video heads first blowing air to it then I use alcohol and chamois pads and a bit of cotton swaps for the rest... but then I decided I should use try a hi8 tape and tried it... the quality was horrible with distorted lines all over... I tried the other 8mm tape I just removed and it played better and record just fine... so I thought may it needed to dry. Once again I tried the hi8 tape and nothing, tried a new hi8 tape and nothing... tried the 8mm and it works... so my question is.... why my camera doesn't like the preferred hi8 mode?
Is it a Digital8 camera? They will record on 8mm and Hi8 tapes. They won't play back old Hi8 recordings. What model is it?
Well, I've looked through the manual, http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=CCDTRV108&LOC=3 and I can't see anything except I'm just guessing, of course your new cassettes are not write protected? Have you checked the error codes on page 77 and 78 of the manual?