MikeND

Does anyone on this forum have actual experience with the RuggedVision ELX DVR?

Has anyone actually plugged in an external hard drive to the firewire port of the Kalatel DVMRe Triplex 16 CT units? They refer to approved firewire drives but I can't seem to find a list or is it pretty much any external hard drive that meets the broader IE 1394 specificationa?

Are some of the manufacturer's hardware troubleshooting assistance better than others? We have a Kalatel DVMRe-16CT that is slightly off warranty that we would like some hardware & component upgrade assistance before we possibly send it back to the factory unnecessarily. Shipping with over 3K insurance 2 ways with extra downtime is not ideal. If hardware assistance is through dealer only, there is a problem if the dealer is not knowledgeable enough. Long term wise, we were going to upgrade our system but we have not found anyone to answer even a basic question such as cost of internally increasing hard drive capacity or when & how to upgrade firmware. It seems like such a waste to have to ship with unnecessary major expense & downtime to just do something as simple & straightfoward as replacing firmware, a power supply or a hard drive. The only features we are really after for our system which we hope to improve & upgrade is to have ethernet connectivity, at least 720 x 484 picture quality(>or=60 fps) & to be able to quickly hand off a CD of a video clip to law enforcement. Thanks for any suggestions.

It sounds like if you have the correct & uncorrupted firmware for the respective Kalatel model in flash memory you can just install a new hard drive if needed & the DVMRe 16CD or 16CT will automatically format the drive with the proper & needed files etc. Is this correct?