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From the article:

In his demonstration, Bresson used a device sold online for about $200 by United Kingdom-based Canopus. The box allows people to make copies of videocassettes and DVDs even if the video is locked with software to prevent such tampering.

Now Canopus has offices in the US. I figure that Bresson would probably not be prosecuted, basically cause there's no money involved. However, since Canopus has a branch in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if they were sued.

After all the best way to stop all of us "pirates" is to eliminate the tools we use.

I wondered this too. The video is already digital. Why can't I download it at 19.2kbps if I wanted to? I suspect that the DV tape just can't be run at a slow speed (or rather, the playback deck wasn't designed to slow down).

I'm still waiting to buy one of these, but from the research I've done, I think that Canopus has the best 1394 solution now. They have an explanation of why their card works "perfectly" that sounds good to me.

I wondered this too. The video is already digital. Why can't I download it at 19.2kbps if I wanted to? I suspect that the DV tape just can't be run at a slow speed (or rather, the playback deck wasn't designed to slow down).

I'm still waiting to buy one of these, but from the research I've done, I think that Canopus has the best 1394 solution now. They have an explanation of why their card works "perfectly" that sounds good to me.

I'm one of the original guys who posted the Ask Slashdot question.

I never said I wanted "the best" - I know how much prices vary, when it comes to this stuff. (4 to 5 orders of magnitude.) Pointing out my desire to use a DCR-TRV 103 was, as you pointed out, a very consice way for me to say exactly what level of product I would be happy with - I think for the money ($649), it can't be beat.

You're right - I'm obviously not high-end. However, I will use whatever system I buy, and I did two days of research before I posted my question. I wan't satisfied with the information I found (and I had run dry on my sources), so I played my Nerd Trump Card - I Asked Slashdot. Unfortunately, my strong Intel bias limited me from finding the G4 information that I needed, making me look like an idiot to people like you. If you unintentionally overlook all the Mac DV editing options, the $499 Canopus Raptor with the full Adobe Premiere 5.1 (together) starts to seem pretty good. After looking at the Raptor Requirements, the eMonster 550R looked like more than enough machine (once you upgrade to about 256M of Ram, and toss in a second hard-drive at about 30G.) Granted, I prefer home-brewed solutions, but the couple eMachines we have at work stack up fairly well, for the price we paid for them. It's also a lot easier to describe a home-brew machine by pointing to the closest consumer-level product...

I don't want to shoot the next Star Wars; I was hoping I could make something that looked 1/10th as cool as El Mariachi. (If you don't know about El Mariachi, then it's hard to imagine you know anything about amateur film-making.) I'd like to make something maybe 5-10 minutes long, for my first attempt. Think "Bedhead", but in color. I believe this is a realistic goal, since Robert Rodriguez says he thinks that digital video is the wave of the future - that young film-makers are going to swamp the biz with fairly high-quality films for dirt cheap. I don't think he'd say that unless he'd researched it some, and he's got far better connections and a lot more money than I do.

Anyways, thanks for the unwarranted criticism - gave me something to stew over.

P.S. If most of the $7000 spent on El Mariachi was on buying and developing film, and if I spend $7000 on digital equipment, do you think I'll be able to come close to its quality? (An Arriflex 16S Camera compared to a Sony DCR-TRV 103?)