TO speak to the original question, I use a maxell rewinder to rewind only. I have taken footage from 1 DVX100A recorded in 24p and footage recorded from a 2nd DVX100A but captured using a canon hv20 (in DV mode) and it was captured as 24p and edited fine with no color differences. So in my limited experience yes the heads SEEM to play the same.
EDIT: Just saw the dvinfo link which seemed to have answered your question. doht!
And to elaborate on storage.. I take the final edited version and record back out to miniDV as an archive. and burn my final compressed version on a dvd or 2 (2 copies).
