During the Sony Seminar last Thursday Alister Chapman was comparing the new Sony PXUMS240 and the NexTo Di NVS-2500. Basically they are external storage devices to store SxS footage freeing your SxS card for more filming during a shoot. Alister has already produced a full reviw of the NVS-2500 which you can see here…http://www.hdwarrior.co.uk/2009/11/21/alister-chapman-reviews-the-nextodi-nvs2500

The comparison was mainly about the portability of both units and his conclusion was that the Sony was better suited as a base unit…in other words if you have various cameramen filming SxS they could come back to base and transfer their material to this unit it copy’s and verify’s on the way in. Note a 32GB card would take 20 mins to copy. Another thing to consider is the Sony unit only copies SxS cards while the NVS-2500 can copy various cards formats.

The NVS-2500 is smaller and better suited to out in the field though it does not verify the material on the first pass ie. when copying from SxS to the NVS-2500.

This is Sonys highlights on the PXUMS240…

• Record Time Per HDD Cartridge: HQ Mode: More than 13 hours / SQ Mode: More than 17 hours
• One-Touch Copy to HDD Cartridge: COPY ONLY: ~600Mbps (10min for 32GB card or approx. 10x real time). COPY & VERIFY: ~300Mbps (20 min for 32GB card or approx. 5x real time)
• High-Speed SxS Read Transfer Function: e-SATA Interface to connect with PC (Max. 800Mbps read transfer speed). Estimated Single Cartridge Ingest Time is less than 1 Hour (up to 17 hours per cartridge @ 35Mbps)

• Internal shock absorbers. The cartridge has an internal HDD which is suspended inside the PXU-HC240 chassis by four specially engineered dampers that help protect against shock.
• 3G shock detection. As in a laptop PC, this system senses a potential shock and temporarily “parks” the read/write heads away from the hard disk surface, to help protect the disk from damage.