I have a Sony Digital-8 that uses HI-8 tapes. After my last trip the camera does not play back. It seems to me that everything is working and the tape is moving but no picture and no tape counter movement. The message display inside the camera leads me to believe that the camera is trying to playback in hi-8 mode a digital-8 video. I reset the camera and checked the settings for play back and the camera should recognize the digital-8 in auto mode. After many web searches I turn to the FT Tech guru's for help!

What happens when you try to play back an analog hi-8 tape? Is the video clear? You need to test this. My guess is that the heads are clogged or something else in the video path has failed and the camcorder no longer recognizes digital-8 data as it's not getting it or it has too many errors to play. The tape counter data is written while you're recording video so if you have no video/no data you'll have no tape counter. A blank tape will exhibit the same behavior.

I did clean the heads and looking inside all looked good.
All the tapes I have are recorded in Digital-8 so I have to find someone with hi-8 tapes to test this.

No, you can do it yourself. Force the camera into Hi-8 mode (can't recall how to do this, it's been ages since I've seen a Digi8 camera) and shoot some video. Try to play it back and see what happens!

Gotcha! I'll give that a try.

Good advice kanebear! Thanks!
I turned on the camera and shot 3 seconds in hi-8 mode then stoped and rewound the tape. When I played back the tape the digital video had returned after the 3 seconds of hi-8 footage! Now the problem is the digital video footage does a short pause every 1-2 seconds while playing.

Get a new headcleaning tape is my first thought. They're good for about 25 passes and then that's it. Also, what did the Hi-8 footage look like? Was it clean or did it have noise?

Try this. After you've cleaned the heads, fast wind the tape you want to play all the way through and then rewind it. The freezes are dropouts due to data errors. DO NOT play the tapes until you've cleaned the heads. You run a very real risk of damaging them. Also, how many times have you reused these tapes? It could be that one of your tapes is shedding and seriously clogging the heads.

Finally... it's an issue in the DV world, not sure if it applies to Hi-8 or not but you generally do not want to switch brands of tapes. Some brands use a different lubricant type (dry vs. 'wet', it's not really wet it has to do with the manufacturing process) and switching between them causes the tape transport to gum up and the heads to get dirty very quickly.

Well I tried it all including the head cleaning and no dice.
Interesting though, it seems the hi-8 video played back OK.