FS-4, Citidisk DV, and other tapeless recording options

Well, I've spent the better part of the day looking for an inexpensive, reliable tapeless recording system. There isn't one - at least not on my budget. Firestore's FS-4 looks like a great solution, but it's still a little pricey ($795 to $1,795 depending on the capacity and options). I found it at amazon.com for $744 but that's still a little rich for my poor budget.

I am amazed at the complete lack of options here. How long have MiniDV tapes been around and there's still not a decent affordable solution? It's not much more complex than a 40GB external drive - get it down in the $400-$500 dollar range and I'd consider it.

The only other competitor I could even find to Firestore was Shining Technology's CitiDisk DV. It seems to have all the options of the Firestore and twice the capacity for about the same price. It all sounds great, but there's a couple of things that make me nervous. From reading through their FAQ's, it's obvious they haven't bothered to have a person that actually speaks English proofread their documents. Plus, the latest updated FAQ I could find was August 2005 - more than six months ago. There are no distributors in the U.S. (they had a link to apple's store, but I couldn't find it anywhere on there). I did find the HDV version (supports both HD and DV) at bhphotovideo.com (versions ranging from $1,124.95 to $1,374.95.

With all the embedded Linux devices these days, can't someone make a simple camera mountable enclosure device that handles all of the formats, scene creation, etc., and let you buy your own laptop hard drive and stick in it? I guess the industry is moving more towards tapless video cameras, like Panasonic's P2, that have all the functionality of tapeless recording built into the camera.

I spent a little (keyword: little) time looking at P2 (panasonic's "revolutionary" tapeless format.) Sounds great if you have a panasonic camera and a ton of money - but not too relevant to me and my Canon GL2.

The main thing driving me towards a tapeless scenario is time. I sometimes film weddings in the morning, and the client wants to show nicely edited footage at the wedding dinner or reception that evening. It makes for a stressful day trying to film, capture, edit, render, and burn and a very short amount of time. I'm already forking out a fair amount of dough upgrading to a beefier computer (and the latest version of Adobe Production Studio - those could be separate blogs in and of themselves), but directly editing from my captured footage would sure save me some valuable time.