Chris & Kevin, thanks for your feedback it's been very informative.

Just to respond to a couple of points. It's just a test setup, so I plan to run 
a few hundred hours of recordings through the system at different resolutions 
to see how they perform. 

Kevin, we currently have a setup with Mac minis and external VGA2USB epiphan 
devices. The amount of cabling can get pretty irritating, especially when we go 
from HDMI to the capture unit. So an all-in-one box would be appealing.

If we procure in the UK the slightly odd UK / EU rules regarding warranties 
will protect us beyond the first year, but it's not exactly the same as 3 year 
coverage. 


Stuart Phillipson | Digital Media Projects Coordinator

Room 1.83 Simon Building
University of Manchester
Brunswick Street
Manchester
M13 9PL
United Kingdom

e-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 016130 60478

On 14 Jun 2012, at 21:18, Kevin Chan wrote:

> Stuart,
> 
> For the purposes of doing just a screen grab, I think any small enclosure 
> that can run Ubuntu (most everything) should be fine. You don't really need a 
> PCI slot as you can always go with an external VGA2USB device. This is 
> basically what Cape Town (Dell Optiplex 780 Ultra Small Form Factor - correct 
> me if I got it wrong) is already doing in production.
> 
> The caveat (beyond pricing and size of the box) with any vendor (even the 
> giant ones like Dell) are reliability and warranty support, so choose 
> carefully (i.e., 1 year warranty on the Logisys system - and I honestly have 
> never heard of them).
> 
>  Kevin Chan
> 
>  Operations Team
>  Educational Technology Services
>  UC Berkeley
> 
> 
> On 6/14/12 12:55 PM, Christopher Brooks wrote:
>> Stuart,
>> 
>> This looks like an interesting box.  We tried some of these enclosures,
>> as well as the LCD versions: http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M300
>> 
>> They were nice in that they were cheap, had active cooling, etc.  Pico
>> PSU works nicely.  The enclosure is cheap though in the way it snaps
>> together.
>> 
>> I liked the look of these but, as seems to be normal, there is no PCI
>> riser slot:
>> http://www.mini-box.com/VoomPC-2-Car-PC-Barebone-Intel?sc=8&category=1129
>> 
>> Same deal with this one, and this is the configuration that I was
>> interested in doing vesa-mount:
>> 
>> http://resources.mini-box.com/online/SYS-M350-IntelD2500HN/moreimages/M350-Universal-Mini-ITX-enclosure-b6.jpg
>> http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M350-Barebone-System
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Chris
>> 
>> On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:20:05 +0100
>> Stuart Phillipson<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi All,
>>> 
>>> I'm planning on testing a few capture agents over the summer with a
>>> view to compare features, reliability and cost. As I'm testing anyway
>>> I thought it would be worth running a self-build capture agent along
>>> side to see how it performs. I'm only interested in capturing the
>>> VGA / DVI output from the presentation PC and a small form factor
>>> would be convenient. So has anyone out there already tried to build
>>> small size capture agents and if so I'd like to hear about your
>>> experiences. For reference I'm thinking of something like this with
>>> an epiphan capture card:
>>> 
>>> https://logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=561
>>> 
>>> It wouldn't necessary need to be fanless, I'm just after something I
>>> can bolt to a desk without taking up too much space.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Stuart Phillipson | Digital Media Projects Coordinator
>>> 
>>> Room 1.83 Simon Building
>>> University of Manchester
>>> Brunswick Street
>>> Manchester
>>> M13 9PL
>>> United Kingdom
>>> 
>>> e-mail: [email protected]
>>> Phone: 016130 60478
>>> 
>> 
>> 

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