miniDV player purchase questions

[videdit_teacher]

I teach video editing at a public high school in the United States. Our class has twenty-four students, six miniDV cameras, and six computers on which to edit video. When the students are ready to capture video they must connect one of the cameras to one of the computers which means that one less camera is available for students who want to shoot video.

I thought I would purchase some miniDV players to solve this problem. I reasoned that miniDV players ought to be cheap since one can purchase a miniDV camcorder for $300 (about €225 or £150) and a player is simply a camcorder without the camera, right? Wrong. As you probably all know, most miniDV players cost at least $1000 (about €750 or £500).

My questions are:

1. Why are miniDV players so expensive?

2. Have I overlooked a cheap miniDV player somewhere? (less than $300/€225/£150)?

[gadgetguy]

1. Because they can.
2. I don't think so, but there are many cheap MiniDV cams for under $300. I just received an ad from TigerDirect that had a miniDV cam for $199. I'm sure they're not the only ones. I suspect the optics aren't that good, but for capsfer of tapes they should be fine.

[redwudz]

Though I haven't tried this, how about a FireWire hub? If you could plug all six cameras into one computer, (With a very large hard drive. ) would this help? At least you would have 5 other computers that could do something else at the same time. But I have no idea if a hub/computer/hard drive could handle this much data.

If your computers were networked, you could then transfer the videos to each computer, or even directly save them on that computers hard drive over the LAN while they are streaming into the first computer. That may require a little too much bandwidth, though. You can also use FireWire for networking.

Any FireWire experts out there?

And welcome to our forums.

[thecoalman]

1. Why are miniDV players so expensive?

I'd surmise there is two related reasons for that.

A) There isn't a large demand for them so if they did produce consumer decks they would probably have to charge as much or possibly more than a cam to make any money so it would pretty much be pointless.

B) The ones that are available are aimed at professionals and much more than just a playback deck, the cheapest one i can find listed at B&H for $850 in addition to mini-DV has a DVD burner and 40GB HDD.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=2129&A=details&Q=&sku=469345&is=REG&...goryNavigation

As for question 2 I haven't ever seen one but I haven't ever really good either, the one listed above is about the cheapest I've come across.