USB2 or Firewire which is best?

[coldspace]

Hi all,
Question for the more experieced computer guys out there,
I am getting a Astro video system that will output the signal in analog s-video and I want to use a converter to display this on my laptop. I was looking at getting the Imaging source converter to do this. They have a USB2 and a firewire model, both these don't compress the image which is great for capturing the best picture. The supplier informs me that the USB2 will be adequate for my needs and is around $150 cheaper than the firewire, has anyone got any opinions on this or am I better to spend the extra for firewire, I don't want to spend the extra if I don't need to, your imput would be great.

Cheers,

Matt.

[iceman]

Hi Matt

It can depend on your computer, and what other resources are trying to use the USB2 port. I changed from a firewire DMK to a USB DMK because of convenience (my laptop didn't have a firewire port, so I needed a PCMCIA card and powered hub).

In *my* experience, I haven't had a single problem capturing at 60fps with my USB2, but I can't comment on how it will be used in your application and may depend on how much data you're trying to shove down the pipe.

[coldspace]

Thanks for that Mike,

I did a bit more looking and my camera will be good to go with the USB2 model.

Matt

[programmer]

Just to make you feel inadequate ;)

"Intel and others plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus (http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9780794-7.html) technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires." "The current USB 2.0 version has a top data-transfer rate of 480 megabits per second, so a tenfold increase would be 4.8 gigabits per second." This should make USB hard drives easier and faster to use."

[g__day]

The industry standard seems to be USB2 over firewire for general purpose - high data rate connections that can't directly use cat 6 cable (gigabit).

[citivolus]

I wonder how much the chipset and connectors will cost to implement USB 3.0 vs say SAS 3Gb/s (current generation) or SAS 6Gb/s (next generation)?

Adding optical transceivers to each end of the link will dramatically increase the cost of devices as well. How much is a current GBIC, for example? Something like $100-$270 on each end of the link? That tends to make for a very expensive implementation. Given those numbers, a first generation USB 3.0 4 port hub will be $1500, and an external USB3.0 hard disk enclosure will be $500. Even second or third generation will be around $500 for a hub and $300 for an empty enclosure.

[g__day]

Its a bit more challenging than that too - because you really benefit most when you up the bandwidth of all system connections and choke points, including local hard drive controllers - so suddenly to get full benefit you are adding solid state drives or RAIDed local storage and or high speed Network Attached Storage (NAS) with appropriate redundancy and resilience - all cost inflating.

Nowadays upgrades can tend to cascade - change one thing and you end up upgrading six things to re-balance your technology components effectively!

[Kal]

Firewire is technically the better standard since it has alot less protocol overhead meaning more of the available bandwidth is available for data. However, better technically doesn't always equate to better option, betamax for example lost to VHS still, and the USB standards dominate Firewire in terms of price and availability, so I would go with USB2.