Sony MEAD SD01 ro stick with existing solutions?
 

My apologies if this is covered but I am seeking an opinion on the Sony MEAD SD01 adapter. I need to replace year old SDHC cards and get a firmware upgrade for my ECX1 (2009)

Would you
1. pay for the Sony MEAD SD01 adapter, the upgrade and new supported SDHC cards?

2. Continue with an M&M adapter and some supported 16 gig SDSHC cards?

3. Not take the risk, mortgage myself and go for the SxS pro ( notsure I can afford a nerw one)?

any feelings why you choice would be excellent
I can't afford to lose a client by taking any chances but don't have the resources for 16 GiG sxs cards. My M&M has been great , no failures, but my 16 gig Transcend cards are approaching a year old

very many thanks for your time, I would never have made it with the EX1 without this forum.
christine

SDHC cards don't go bad with age. They don't have an infinite life however in terms of writes.

That said the rewrites are in the hundreds so unless you've been using them really heavily (every day) I wouldn't worry.

What I would worry about is your choice of card. Wise EX users who follow this forum on a regular basis know that Transcend cards have been the cause of many woes. One poor chap had a Transcend fail, went and bought another one and lost the next days footage. In short, the Class 6 Transcend cards are timebombs when placed in an EX1, unless you are one of the lucky people who bought their card before the manufacturing process changed (around May/June 2009).

The preferred media (and the most reliable) are the ATP Pro Max cards, followed by the Sandisk Extreme.

If you go to the MxM site you will see both for sale. I much prefer the ATP cards although I recently acquired a couple of the Sandisks due to needing some cards quickly and they seem fine so far.

Note that all Flash media can fail, including SxS cards (there is a recent post about this and I also had someone email me a while back saying they had a bad card). But tape can snap, heads can clog, hard drives can break etc. Do it properly and all the risks are about equal.

You should always ensure you are using a recommended SDHC card in the latest generation of SDHC adaptor (there have been notable performance gains as the designs have improved). You should also be running the latest firmware. If you adhere to this you'll be fine. The vast majority of people who report problems broke one of these rules.

I have 8 x original Transcend 16GB class 6 cards which are all fine.

And I've just bought 8 x Class 10 cards from here: Transcend 16GB SD Card (SDHC) - Class 10 £17.79 - Free Delivery

Together with the newer MxR cards these new card seem to be working very well so far.

Have you wondered why the Sandisk and ATP cards cost 3 times as much?

If the cheap cards work for you that's great. But we've had stories on here time and time again regarding the Class 6 Transcends produced after the middle of last year. I'm not prepared to trust their class 10's given that the prices are so low. It's akin to shooting on DV tape from the pound shop.

There haven't been any reports of problems with Class 10s. In fact they even run in full overcrank.

They used to cost three times the current price they are now, I've been watching the prices for a while and only bought these new cards very recently when the price dropped. Now they've dropped even more.

When memory is manufactured it is graded according to quality. Speed is one factor but there are many other factors as well. ATP for example make a particular point of their cards being highly static resistant.

Cheaper memory goes into cheaper cards. You are paying more for the ATP and Sandisk cards because they cost more to make. Not just the memory but the quality of the controller as well. Also in the case of ATP there is only one factory producing the cards rather just shunting production to whenever is cheapest to keep the prices keen (which is what I suspect caused all the Transcend problems to begin with).

At the end of the day, if you use a card 100 times an extra few quid is nothing at all. You may be right, your cards will be fine, but I've seen too many people on here burned (and have now had many phonecalls to the office from people with duff cards).

Having had the heart in mouth moment that results from a duff card (and luckily getting everything back barring about a minute which was covered by a B camera) I don't want anyone else to go through that.

What about the adapters themselves?

Will there be any difference in speed/performance depending on which adapter you use?

MxM have recently announced that you can now overcrank with the class 10 cards. Will that be true with the Sony adapters aswell?

Sony state that their adaptors do not support overcranking.

In terms the performance of SDHC adaptors, both manufacturers have refined their designs both externally (with lockable card slots) and internally (with faster controllers).

NB: I have accidentally shot 50fps overcranked footage onto an MxM with a Class 6 ATP with no ill effects. The SxS was in slot 2 and I forgot to switch. It all worked flawlessly although obviously it was probably very borderline and would not be something I would do intentionally.

I still use my older Transcend cards, but I had to return the newer ones because of some errors. Same with the Sandisk extremes.

However, that was with firmware 1.11

Since then I upgraded to firmware 1.20 and have been buying the Patriot LX cards:

Newegg.com - Patriot LX 32GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Flash Card Model PSF32GSDHC10

Newegg.com - Patriot LX 16GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Flash Card Model PSF16GSDHC10

They work flawlessly (with firmware 1.20)

There have even been rebates on them making them an amazing bargain. I just sent in a rebate form for a 16GB card bringing the final cost down to $19.99

In terms of the notion that the internals of the ATP cards are superior to others, I would have to see some documentation to corroborate that before I believe it. A few were making the same argument about SxS cards with that not always proven statement - "You get what you pay for". Don't forget, we now live in a world of marketing strategy and monopoly. Competition lowers prices. Without it, you have price gouging. Price gouging is not "You get what you pay for".

John

What you are paying for is the fact that the type of memory used in the full SxS cards can be rewritten thousands and thousands of times as well as (probably) some fancy wear levelling firmware in the controller. Until recently that didn't come cheap. The reliability thing was something of a red herring given the stories recounted here and elsewhere.

With regards to SDHC, memory is made the same way but it is graded after manufacture. The lower grade stock goes into the cheaper cards. Then there's the manufacture of the cards themselves, for example the ATP cards are static resistant, dust proof and waterproof. The simple economics of it dictate you charge a premium price for a premium card.

The one thing I know about the Transcend Class 6 cards was that their read/write speed was noticeably slower than the equivalent ATP's. That had nothing to do with the camera firmware. I still have those cards hanging around for my stills camera and they are a good deal slower than the other Class 6 cards I have.

Think of it like putting decent tyres on your car. In normal operation you'll never notice them but one day that premium you paid might save you skidding off the road without you ever realising it just because the tyres have 10% more grip than the budget ones.

I gave up on my Transcend cards quite a while ago (16 gig, purch. prior to card changes) and was not using them for anything. I got a Nikon P7000 and used it in that camera for a recent trip, but the card failed completely after a few days of use. I got lucky and got my files off the card, but it is no longer recognizable by either the camera or the computer. Can't format it....dead, dead, dead. I gave my other 16 gig Transcend to a buddy of mine, but I've now called him to warn him.