XtremeSpeakFreely

MicroCenter, if you have one near you, or even if you don't, is selling 1TB Hitachi harddrives for $70 plus tax. They're on the website too. I got two in-store for $150.83 OTD. Over $20 cheaper than newegg before shipping, and probably the cheapest 1TBs around.

7200rpm, 32mb cache

Link please, I can't find it on their site. EDIT: found it http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/954 ... 954986af/3

Woops. In-store only. Sorry guys.

damn that's a great deal!

The 1TB version went up by $10 for the second half of this month… I guess sales must have been good.

The 2TB version stays at $150; they also have the HD650 (PCI) for $30, a tempting combo even for a broke ass like me!

EDIT: PCIe HD 600 for $22 is today's daily deal... I'm off!

Newegg's 1TB Hitachi (Retail box) is down to $80, with, get this, a $5 MIR. ROFL Who would even bother? Just drop the price to $75 already.

Thats why they offer MIB. Most people do not turn them in. They usually take forever to get, if at all. And you usually get screwed on a technicality. But for most people it will still effect their purchase.

Well, I bought and returned two PCI HD 650s - they seemed designed more to be part of a stand alone DVR than part of a HTPC.

newegg is definitely the better place to buy HDDs, $80 shipped trumps MC in Chicago with 10.25% tax! I’ll just hold off on HDDs, I don’t even have a good digital tuner or blu ray drive!

I've got an HD650--the PCI-E variant, though. Was it retail box or just the tuner itself? Mine came with a remote, IR blaster, all that nonsense. Works well in my server (I just login remotely to set stuff to record, usually). What do you mean 'part of a standalone DVR'?

I bought the PCI version of the HD 650, the brand was Diamond:
http://microcenter.com/single_product_r ... id=0325257
It was sold as a retail package, but had only the card, a CD that had drivers with ATI’s tuner/multimedia software (avivo), and no remote (although the MC site says it does).

Well, the PCI HD 650 (at least this particular version) does not have even basic microcontroller/memory outside of its tuner and video processor; resource allocation and all processing are handled by software interrupts to the host computer. The drivers and application combination (both ATI) do not handle signal bounce at all, and seem to have very poor implementation of multi-threading. I tested on XP SP3, and did not bother testing on Vista/7 because the application required a VC++ redistributable, so I assumed there would be no use of the .NET framework/CLR. I also have little nitpicks like the software not displaying signal strength and poor visual interface design.

And before you ask, I have not played with Myth TV/Sage TV and do not have a server board to spare!

My 650 PCI doesn't even work, so consider your experience lucky. I've got a 550 that doesn't work, too. I guess I'll have to depend on my one 550 that does work and works fine.

I have a blu ray burner and recently got a PS3 that I swapped a 640GB HDD into the minute it got out of the box.

Its amazing, just backing up the stuff I own and I am eating away at that space. I got a 1TB on my desktop that I can stream from, but I think I am going to have to look at more of these.

I tell you what, its more than worth it to not have to get up to swap disks. And with all of the kids movies too, they never get ruined.