[2] In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly associated with the transition from analog to digital desktop video production, and also with several enduring "prosumer" camera designs such as the Sony VX-1000.

[4] In the 2010s, DV rapidly grew obsolete as cameras using memory cards and solid-state drives became the norm, recording at higher bitrates and resolutions that were impractical for mechanical tape formats.

Additionally, as manufacturers switched from interlaced to superior progressive recording methods, they broke the interoperability that had previously been maintained across multiple generations of DV and HDV equipment.

These standards define common features such as physical videocassettes, recording modulation method, magnetization, and basic system data in part 1.

601 standard, DV video employs interlaced scanning with the luminance sampling frequency of 13.5 MHz.

The audio, video, and metadata are packaged into 80-byte Digital Interface Format (DIF) blocks which are multiplexed into a 150-block sequence.

Sony and Panasonic created their proprietary versions of DV aimed toward professional & broadcast users, which use the same compression scheme, but improve on robustness, linear editing capabilities, color rendition and raster size.

All DV variants except for DVCPRO Progressive are recorded to tape within interlaced video stream.

DVCPRO, also known as DVCPRO25 and D-7, is a variation of DV developed by Panasonic and introduced in 1995, originally intended for use in electronic news gathering (ENG) equipment.

For example, BBC used DVCPRO50 to record high-budget TV series, such as Space Race (2005) and Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2006).

It offered 480 or 576 lines of progressive scan recording with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and four 16-bit 48 kHz PCM audio channels.

DVCPRO HD, also known as DVCPRO100 and D-12, is a high-definition video format that can be thought of as four DV codecs that work in parallel.

Similar horizontal downsampling (using rectangular pixels) is used in many other magnetic tape-based HD formats such as HDCAM.

A long play variant, DVCPRO HD-LP, doubles the recording density by using 9 μm track pitch.

After the technology improved, the dropout rate was greatly reduced, nevertheless Panasonic deemed ME formulation not robust enough for professional use.

Tape-based professional Panasonic DVCPRO camcorders and decks only record onto DVCPRO-branded cassettes, effectively preventing use of ME tape.

In particular: Video is stored either as native DIF bitstream or wrapped into an audio/video container such as AVI, QuickTime or MXF.

When video is captured onto a computer it is stored in a container file, which can be either raw DV stream, AVI, WMV or QuickTime.

Whichever container is used, the video itself is not re-encoded and represents a complete digital copy of what has been recorded onto tape.

If needed, the video can be recorded back to tape to create a full and lossless copy of the original footage.

High end cameras and VTRs may have additional professional outputs such as SDI, SDTI or analog component video.

All DV variants have a time code, but some older or consumer computer applications fail to take advantage of it.

The low costs of DV equipment and their ease of use put such cameras in the hands of a new breed of videojournalists.

The DV meta-information is preserved in both file types being Sub-timecode and Start/Stop date times which can be muxed to Quicktime SMPTE standard timecode.

Sony has done a significant amount of internal testing to simulate head clogs as a result of mixing tape lubricants, and has been unable to recreate the problem.

Customers have requested VTRs that can play additional DV-based 6 mm formats such as the consumer DV LP and DVCPRO.

Sony will be offering new VTRs that can play back both of these additional formats without headclog and tape path issues.

It was realized early on that the VTR transport needed to be optimized to play various tape formulations and thicknesses.

In addition, there is no need to dub DV LP or DVCPRO footage to another format for use as source material.

Robert Ott, Vice President for storage products and marketing, Sony Electronics, Park Ridge, New Jersey[37]