Hi Paul, About Dieter... I read an article where they stated that Dieter was memebr of the board at a company that builds mixing consoles for video/film editing. He and the rest of the boardmembers injected 6 milion dolars into that company. That would give him some credit in the bussiness and will sure pay off with some goodies and wannahaves for us moddest vid-editors. The Video thing... I can read you've had your share in the video gear arena. Cool! In the photo-studio where I work there's sometimes a bunch of people that shoot commercials for toys. It looks so grotty and cheap, like it was ment for a whole different solarsystem, but these guys and galls have a machinery that makes me drule and go into a comatose state. A set of Canon DV camera's and Macs build in Filghtcases with flatscreens and what not. In theory their gear would support capturing their material and send it right away to their homebase by the internet or satelite. Increadible. Their gear equals a nice house in Spain along the cost with servants and a couple of flashy secondhand cars in the garage. And lets not forget the swimmingpool. Or a private live performance of Yello in the living room. - The Raptor card was my first encounter with Canopus! It came with the extra bay. The salesguy told me that the analog ins and outs could be used as capture ports... not!!! The where intentionaly ment for previewing. However with Virtual Dub and PICVIDEO MJPEG Codec I managed to turn the Raptor into a Full Analog Capture Device. I was proud once more. Later that week I got the ACDV 100 as a test case, and got mental over the quality (f.ing good) and the intollarance to my computer and software. It turned out that the Canopus drivers re-route the audio of DV directly to the PCI bus into the audio card. And this option messed things up. And would result in getting another PC with a High end audio card... I don't think so. So.. my solution, after some consult with Chris who already had the Movie Box a couple of days, I bought the Pinnacle Box. Satisfied on several fronts. It works, It works and it keeps on doing so. Something which is rare. Over the years (atleast 7) I've wroked with all the software you can think of (I think). Premiere made me loose my hair. But I'm unsure if this had something to do with the MIRO cards like DC20 and DC30. Occasionaly I was allowed to snif at Avid systems but never long enough to get the hang of it or give an opinion about it. And there was always this little bug that kept me away from seeing the real deal. Thinking back on it I had a serious problem working with A good Card and the Appropriate software. The combinations were always off. But I managed and finaly I turned back to my DC20 from Miro and got it working on a Athlon/Asus based PC with 512 mb and lot's of hardrive storage. Finaly after six to seven years I had the damn thing running as if it was the latest thing from Pinnacle/Miro. But the years took it's toll, and it's chips and what not are dying. There's a very anoying ghosting problem. An image is doubled but only faintly and only the darker parts. But still very vissible. Bugger. With all my connections I'm fortunate enough to lay my hands on interesting software. Discarded old versions with manuals and dongles or just for a couple of weeks to have a go with it. Pinnacle Studio is for those who just want to cut and paste their funniest home video of their pets and grandma's. But good enough for the my first sony experience and getting the hang of the oddities in Video Edit land. I found Avid Xpress a bit hard to understand. But that's only due to what one is used to. Premiere has been my choice in lack of other tools, and I use it like a toothbrush. Without having to think how to use it to get things done. Avid on the other hand has more to offer and has more knobs and thingies and makes me wanna run. But in time, with my new stable Capture Box, I'll spend more time with it and learn it like Premiere. As for online storage... I solved that by nicking an 80 gig 7200 rpm drive out of my power Mac and shove it into my PC. With and extra 60 gig 7200 rpm drive. And from time to time I take my PC to work and copy the projects onto the main server with all it's back up fascilities. My old dat-tape drive can't manage what I'm processing these days... :-) - Paul... if you are into video stuf, I mean privatly, then try to lay your hands on the Movie Box. It's about 299 euro's, and all you need is an descent Firewire card to make it work with Premiere, Studio or Avid. I'm a pro-Mac dude, but can't afford them. Or.. I have too many costly interest to set aside money to get one. That's why I did buy a PC crammed to the top with add-ons and kept it a secret to my mac arsenal at work :-) (Don't let 'm know... they'll tkae revenge and make me suffer.) It does the job at a lower expense and with some toe-nail biting at some occasions. And while the PC is processing data, my little bronze keyboard Power Book is purring on my lap while I surfe the net or play some silly game to keep the child within me silent, or I write yet another story where I live in a world that suits me like a glove. Hey... I could be wrong... but is the Matrox DV500 perhaps a clone or brother/sister from the Pinnacle DV500? Pinnacle is very bussy in taking over other companies or buying their inventions. They did the same with Miro who was one of the brands to go to for reasonable affordable gear like Monitors and video stuff. Now Pinnacle took over Dazzle. But even today it comes to the concept of designing and selling parts for others to build the casing around it. On the DC20 theres the Philips MJPEG chip, and I was not surprises to see it re-appear (well also a Philips chip) on the Canopus Raptor device. Sony decided to build the DV camera, and Sharp just bought a liscence to build 50% of it and design the rest themselves. Resulting in a Price difference of 400 Euro... hmmm... and plastic bits instead of alu-compounds like Sony uses. Rene