I disagree, there is sometime chances of drop outs and skipping, etc. that goes on with the camera heads not lining up correctly, etc when using a cheap camera as a deck. If you have not had that issue, then consider it lucky and you are fine as far as lining up with your camera, but I know for a fact that some tapes from some cameras will not always play in another camera, especially the cheap ones. As far as degrading the audio or image, it will not do this, but you WILL and CANexperience technical issues with the heads from camera to camera, whereas with a deck you will probably never encounter these issues, or the use of higher end cameras as a deck, usually won't have this issue. If you only are capturing footage from one camera and using a cheap camera as a deck and aren't having any issue, then great, but if you are pulling footage from mutiple cameras and multiple brands of cameras, you better get a deck!!!