dv to firewire question

I have a whole bunch if dv tapes I wanna edit on my mac, but I no longer have the camera to hook it up. Can anyone vouch for any kind of adaptor or solution which would allow me to get my dv tapes onto a computer without the camera?

Anyone know of anything or any service that does this?

I'm sure I've seen DV decks out there, but I can't imagine it would be cost effective to buy one for a one-off conversion session like this.

Check your yellow pages for video transfer services. Most photo/video shops and a lot of office supply stores (Office Depot, Staples, etc.) around here do it. It would probably be cheaper than buying gear unless you intend to keep doing it long-term.

Then again after having 2-3 tapes transferred it might be cheaper to buy a used DV camera on eBay or something. Or just borrow somebody's camera to do it, surely you know somebody with a DV cam?

I use my dv camera, i would just try to borrow a camera

These are DVC tapes, from a 3 chip pro model camcorder. Can any camera play these back? Would it matter what is playing it back (i.e. can the camera degrade the quality?)

[quote9c53f56439="freedesktoppc"]These are DVC tapes, from a 3 chip pro model camcorder. Can any camera play these back? Would it matter what is playing it back (i.e. can the camera degrade the quality?)[/quote9c53f56439]
DV is DV, regardless of the CCD(s) used to lay down the image. You just get a better analog to digital capture and conversion with the 3CCD camera, but once the bits are stored on the tape, anything should read that data as-is. Using Firewire it would be a digital capture, so you should get the exact same digital bits that were written to it, regardless of the camera doing the reading.

At least in theory that's the way it should work, I can't say that I've had to opportunity to test it. )