Can you run a 50 watt MV lamp off the corresponding MH ballast without capacitor/igniters without any harm to the lamp or it's performance? It would seem to me all you would need is just the ballast (transformer) as the lamp does not need capacitors/igniters to start and run, or do I have this totally wrong? I remember reading that the same wattage MH ballast will run the MH lamp but if it has to hot restrike it is hard on the electrodes and I thought to remedy that you could just eliminate the extra ballast parts, but I don't know if that would work. Appreciate any input on this.

At first the capacitor you can never omit at all (unless explicitly allowed by ballast manufacturer - like series choke reactor), as it is part of the ballasting functionality and has nothing to do with lamp ignition method. If you remove it, you risk lamp (CWA) and ballast (CWA and HPF HX) severe overload: On CWA you remove the main reactive ballasting component, so if the magnetic shunt saturate (as it normally does in order to stabilize the lamp current in conjunction with the capacitor), on HX (mainly the multitap) the other, then the capacitor is perscribed, taps are rated for only the real power input (phase compensated) and not the foll apparent input power, yielding ~3..4x higher then current.

At second, MV50W current rating is 0.6A, while MH's rating is 0.75A, so it would be overloaded. The "50W MH" ballast would be fine for 75W MV, of course the ignitor should be deactivated/removed.