Check out the archos 300 series multimedia jukebox / video recorder. Up to 80 g portable haddisk, tv screen, firewire to camera - but alas, only mpeg 4 avi encoding. anyone have any idea if it's possible to hack this baby to wrap in dv avi format ...?

If it doesn't support it out of the box I'd suggest looking for
another device. Usually impossible or hard to hack devices to
do something completely different (like you are looking for).

except that it's not so completely different, just designed for a different market. it's a quarter the size, a quarter the weight, & has twice the g storage as a pyro but just the wrong encoder. with a built in viewer.

but it fills me with optimism for the furture :-)