Thoughts on DAT tape? Any users?

I had a Sony DTC75ES I bought in 1990.  I found some of the DAT tapes I recorded had dropouts 5 years later.  A few years ago, I offered the Sony deck to my brother who is in a jazz band. He wasn’t interested and my thinking of it being a dead format, brought the deck and tapes to a place that recycles audio equipment. I am still kicking myself in the ass for that dumb mistake.  

Couple of nice looking Panasonic and Tascam units on Fleabay right now under the pro audio section.
I see the Panasonic has balanced XLR in/out only which is normally a sure sign of pro audio usage rather than home audio.

Every musician I know who was into home recording moved from DAT to computer digital for home stuff, and many are now stuck with piles of DAT tapes. Even Garage Band sounds better.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124247492053

https://www.ebay.com/itm/193504611021

I can only vouch for Sony; made in Japan, excellent build quality, worked very well. They have the typical Sony PITA menu dialogue as their other components.
In a pro setting, a sync generator is required to lock the deck’s data to other machines. I think in a home setting it is set to internal sync.

Uber, I have reservations about the longevity of the cassette tapes. The tape is extremely small and thin but the transports handled them gently during FF and Rev. I don’t know how the oxide and the winding of the cassette holds up over time.

Although, during the era of the DAT, we would eject tapes and toss them around and they were physically very sturdy. They do sound excellent in a home system, but as stated it is a dead format.

Due diligence required, don't buy an early production model. DAT had some bugs in the beginning. 

Digital tape has one advantage over recording to computer - according to RIAA it is legal to copy any music to digital tape (including friends CDs) because royalties were paid by tape manufacturer.  Audio CD-Rs and MiniDisks are also legal, but copying CD that you don't own to plain data CD-R or computer's HD is illegal.
Recording to Audio CD-R seems easier than DAT, but it cannot be erased.