While searching B&H for their cheapest hard drive recorders, I came across this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=391815&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

160GB, HD/SD, firewire input

It seems pretty basic with its "one-touch recording" and whatnot but who can argue that price? Toshiba's website quotes it at twice the price but i'm 99% sure the one listed on B&H is the same product.

http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/televisions/product.asp?model=160hd4


Aside from the fact that you can't directly copy the files to your computer, would this make for a decent FireStore alternative?

Thats a really really good price. Their is a TS standard for broadcast (and some werid laws about their transport over firewire in the US) which is I think identical to HDV. So it should be able to be used with a HDV camera, but the SD it will pickup I think is still mpeg 2 TS so I don't think it can be used with a mini DV camera.

It doesn't look right to me - they could be using a proprietary protocol to establish communication between the TV and the recorder and how do you get information off?

It doesn't say anywhere in the specs that I saw that this will work as a standard firewire HD on a PC?

The JVC D-VHS VCR's could record the firewire output from Set top boxes and many people are using CapDVHS to capture HDV which was intended to capture d-vhs initially so I would suspect that since this seems like a digital equivalent it should be able to capture hdv via firewire from some hdv cameras if not all. - But could be wrong