Mini DV Cassette Rewinders- are there any good ones out there?

Hi, I have a Sony hc96 that works very good, but I have heard that the rewinding mechanism of the camcorder could be broken if I will rewind too many tapes in the camcorder, so I've decided to buy a cassette rewinder. I went to amazon.com and looked at the reviews, and they all said that those rewinders jam and brake the mini dv tapes.
How about you do you know any good cassette rewinders, can you recommend something?

thanks

It is an endless discussion which comes up on occasion. There does not seem to be a common reliable tape rewinder for MiniDV tapes on the market. The vast majority of users here do not use them.

Here are some threads regarding tape rewinders:
Mini-DV Rewinders
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=116070

Tape winders/rewinders
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showthread.php?p=58130

Mini DV Rewinder
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/t103418.html

Digital Video Tape Rewinder
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/t1633.html

Anybody using a Mini DV Rewinder?
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=8480

At dvinfo.net some reasonable responses:

Tape Rewinders
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=23531&highlight=tape+rewinder

Sima SRW62
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=297315&postcount=5

MiniDV Rewinder for $20. Which do you use?
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51748&highlight=tape+rewinder

DV Tape Rewinder
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=12691&highlight=tape+rewinder


I do not own a MiniDV rewinder.



Rich

I'd be leery of any rewinding unit that just ran a high-speed motor and relied on slippage of a friction clutch to "stop" when the tape is fully rewound. Too much chance of stretching the tape or, at the least, compressing the tape on the spool.

At the least, a rewinder should monitor both spool speeds -- though differences in tape thickness and spool length means one could not apply a constant differential for "approaching end of spool".

From what I've seen, cameras have a relatively slow rewind speed, but also manage to monitor the time-code and spool differentials so they can slow down near the end of the spool. By the time you've added /that/ much logic to a rewinder, you might as well add A/V outputs and make it a playback deck.

I had a Maxell miniDV rewinder and found that roughly 1 out of 4 times when a tape been rewound back to the start and you eject it, the tape would get caugh inside and you would end up pulling out the cassette and having to carefully rethread the tape back on the spools.

Here is a link to the product to Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/MAXELL-MDV-RW1-Cassette-Rewinder/dp/B00006HOEF/ref=cm_cr-mr-title/002-3116458-3136009

I currently have a Sony-TRV950 and just rewind my tapes in there. As someother posters have stated, it knows when the tape is near the start and slows down. The Maxell product would run full speed to a stop, probably not good for the tapes.

I would not recommend one.