Hey Bronts
Digital-8 uses standard analog Video Hi8 tapes, but records the video signal in digital form using the DV codec. Recording time is halved for Hi8 tapes because of the extra information you need to store with digital - no it dosn't interlace
not sure of the exact fps
In terms of quality you should find Digital8 is very good - its comparable to the DV and MiniDV formats.
Worth noting that Digital-8 is very much a consumer format, you won't find any 3CDD chip cameras or any broadcast quality hardware... Personally if you want to move up from MiniDV or DV i would highly recommend DVC PRO - the quality compared to MiniDV is incredible .. its bloody expensive though!
What camera you using at the moment, ive never used a camera that hasn't had the manual focus controls on the lenses (TV Cameras excluded) - I would think that you wouldn't be able to do the lens switch on most cameras - you need to go up the price market for standard interchangeable lenses at which point you have good lenses with the controls your referring to (and you probably wouldn't want to take it off anyway!.
Im with you on the quality you get with 8mm - and despite having used some of the best MiniDV cameras around i still prefered the quality of 8mm... but when i shot a film on DVC pro and sat down and compared it with some MiniDV footage well i was very inpressed... it really picked up all my faults with MiniDV (somthing to be said also for the excellent cameras we were shooting on) ... mind you we could stop right now and start talking about HD ....
