Palm pilot for HVX?

I

Icarus2005

Well-known member
If all that's needed in order to use cheap portable harddrives is a smart device, then why can we just something like a Palm Pilot hooked up to one of the small 80gig harddrives that you can buy for just 130 bucks?

think about it:
palm: 400
HDD: 130
total: 530 instead of 2,000 plus for the alternates available.

the firestore is in essence nothing more than a palm with a small harddrive in it, isn't it?

so make the small haddrive seperate velcoed to a plate attached below the cam and on the other side of it the palm also velcroed and a USB2 feeding them from the cam.

Why can't this work for a reasonable price? If you can go straight into a laptop then should be able to this as well.

please explain oh great tech-heads out there
 
Not anything near an expert, but I'd think that even if it did work, it would work very slowly. And if you only had 1 or 2 4 gig P2 cards, that might be a problem...

It is an interesting question, isn't it?

John
 
I like the idea.

I think jarred recorded right to his powerbook HD using FCP and pressing capture now.

There maybe a reason why this doesn't work but don't know what it is. Assuming you can instal some sort of capturing software on the palm.

Barry?

-rook
 
Unfortunately, that won't work... What is meant by "intelligent" when talking of external HDD devices is that the drive must be able to accept the DV/DVCPRO data stream coming from the camera. So, you can connect it directly to a PC/Mac equipped with an NLE that has the proper codec for capturing this stream. Or you can connect to a device like the FireStore drive, which internally understands DV/DVCPRO.
 
But couldn't install the NLE system into the palm and capture to the HDD?

My main point as stated in the first post, is that firestore is basically a palm pilot, and obviously they are making it work.

sure, you might have to add something to the palm pilot or upgrade it somehow, but wouldn't it be cheaper still?

also, if this can be done, I'd rather have it that way, where you can have small 80 gig HDDs that you swap out, rather have to stop work so that you can download the firestore or whatever other system they have. This just makes more sense to me from economical and speed point of view.

Of course, none of these other companies want us to figure out such a way to make it work, do they now? :)
 
Obviously a few things would have to be taken into account (and I'm not all that familiar with the Palm Pilot) but: first, you'd have to have two firewire ports on the Palm. Do they?

Second, you'd have to implement DV100 AV/C capture protocol in the Palm OS. I can't imagine that that already exists; it didn't exist in Windows until XP Service Pack 2. Then you'd need SBP2 protocol to control an external drive through the other firewire port -- does Palm OS support this already? If not, that's a problem.

Third, you'd have to somehow benchmark the target recording drive to make sure it can handle a minimum sustained write speed of 15 megabytes per second. Not all drives can. Not all that many laptop drives can. What do you do when someone plugs in a substandard hard disk which can't physically maintain the data rate?

Fourth, can Palm OS handle traffic of 15 megabytes per second coming in, and 15 megabytes per second going out? Would the processor even be capable of handling data transfer of that magnitude?

If it's possible, I'm sure some enterprising palm programmer will figure it out, if they're incentivized to do it. I would just doubt that the hardware would have the horsepower necessary to deal with the data flow, and the appropriate hardware connections too.
 
Barry, of course no existing palm has what's needed. That's not the point of this post.

Given that things are moving light speeds in the tech world, in particular with gaming and such. It stands to reason that such a device with multiple applications will surface in the relative near future. Provided that is, the we, the public in need, let it be known.

As stated above, the firestore isn't much more than a hi capacity Palm Pilot. Obviously it DOES exist and is in use. Obviously the market for such a device is rather small in perspective to the type of market a regular Palm Pilot serves. Given that, it stands to reason that a Palm type company would see the potential of cross-marketization of a product can serve our recording needs, protable game play needs and the standards Palm Pilot type needs all in one. Naturally that product would cost a good bit more than standard Palms, but it would still be a LOT less the options we currently have.

Yes, you make good points, all of which I hope people ar listening to and taking into acount in their R&D for a new palm type cheap alternative for HD capture. :)
 
I have a 'Life Drive' which is Palms' 4 gig offering. The LD is not built for media whatsoever and struggles with other basic applications. Believe me, the Palm is not ready for prime time when discussing options such as the DVX or HVX. By the time Palm figures out how to make the LD 'high speed'(old military term), Apple will be on its 4th or 5th gen Vid Ipod. Bottom line, don't hold your breath when it comes to Palm in this capacity.

Palm LD will play Mpeg1 vid and that's it. Third party software(freeware) allows MP4 play.

I'll ***** about the LD, but it has some strong features I like, multimedia is not one of them. Perhaps, their move to Windows software will open a Windows competitive product to the Ipod juggernaut.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top