Cost
 

Can anyone give a fairly good reason why these things cost so much. Arn't they basically just a harddrive that encodes in a specific format like .avi and have a battery and firewire. I mean archos does something similar while the resoltion i belive is not good enough for video, records in other than .avi, and is missing firewire. But the cost is more reasonable.

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_g.../search=archos

I know that they probably sell a lot more of those than tapeless video recording devices so maybe that's part of the reason.

1. Look at my Firestore FS-3 review and you'll see that there's far more complexity involved in the top-of-the-line professional devices.

2. The few companies manufacturing the devices are tiny (by market capitalization standards). They rely on many external off-the-shelf component suppliers. With relatively low sales volumes they don't get great pricing leverage.

3. There is relatively little competition today. That may not change much any time soon, since the market is relatively small.

4. At the high-end, pricing can be established as a time-savings value proposition. A $2,000-$4,000 d-t-d unit can pay for itself in very little time in a commercial environment. Pricing is always an issue in the amatuer/hobbyist sector. That's really where MCE's products are trying to make their play.

Thanks ken, i never really considered that it would save money if you did this profesionally and didn't have to go through captureing.

Actually Ken, nNovia is one of the very few OEM's that uses its own proprietary technology to overcome the propensity to simply "repackage PC's" by a vast majority manufacturers of DVR's. What this means in laymen’s terms is that in order to take a HDD out of a PC you need something to replace the OS - not a small task by ANY stretch of the imagination. Couple this complexity with selectable video formats (especially on OUTPUT) and you have a seriously complex device. Then you tackle reliability...

The art of engineering lies in making complex devices simple - hence the trendy term "digital appliances". These devices are most assuredly NOT the business of choice for the OEM that is faint of heart, ergo the prices.