On the back of the the DF420 tape is a graph comparing D-VHS tape to S-VHS tape. What is Carrier Noise and can someone expain what the graph is showing?

It's not "Carrier Noise" it's "Carrier to Noise Ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_to_noise_ratio)" [C/N]. Closely related to the more commonly used "Signal to Noise Ratio" [S/N or SNR]. In theory, a larger number will have fewer drop-outs. In reality, this is all marketing jargon trying to convince consumers to buy the more expensive "digital" tapes rather than buying high quality S-VHS tapes and punching a hole on the bottom (to fool the VCR into recording a digital signal on to them). That's my take. I've recorded hundreds of digital recordings on to virgin S-VHS Fuji ST-120's and have almost no drop-outs. When I do very occasionally see a glitch in playback, I usually suspect the incoming signal had a quirk, not my tape. If I still have the original source on my DVR, and then play back the trouble spot live from the DVR, 9 out of 10 times I see the same glitch on the original, and hence don't blame the tape. Digital duplication is digital duplication. It either works perfectly, or is broken. Rarley is there any middle ground. People who think differently probably also think certain brands of blank CDR's have "deeper tighter bass". :rolleyes: