I began using these tapes when I bought my first Sony digital camcorder 10 years ago, and have taken many hundreds of hours of excellent footage with them. I have never had any reason to change. Indeed - one reason in particular for not changing is that Sony use a different (wet) tape lubricant than other brands of tape, and so you should always stick to Sony tapes if you start using them, or the dry lubricant used on other tapes will cause problems with clogging. The same applies if you start using dry lubricant tapes - in that case, avoid Sony tapes.
When I moved to HD two years ago (Canon HV20), I started using the far more expensive Sony HD tapes exclusively, and they performed extremely well. However, there is a lot of misinformation put out that only specialist HD tapes can be used successfully with an HD camcorder. Let me make it clear here and now that *this is not the case*. I have used Sony Premium MiniDV tapes (at half the price of the HD variants) with my Canon HV20 with perfect results, and no drop-outs to date. For this reason I almost always use these, and only switch the the HD variety when I am taking mission critical footage. There is no difference in storage capacity between the HD and standard Premium tapes, and a lot of people don't realise this. The difference is in the quality of the coating, and the standard tapes are already so good, the HD varient are really overkill.
So whether you're shooting standard definition or even HD footage (as long as it's not a very important occasion like a wedding) these tapes are truly exceptional in both performance and reliability. Thoroughly recommended.
