Blimy this is a nice budget camera.

[Rocket Pooch]

Well on paper it seems to be.

http://www.meade.com/dsi/

[Ian]

any idea how much it's likely to cost. Reading through the spec sheet it appears to be passively cooled, which might limit it's real long exposure performance.

However, the CCD is known to be good.

Interestingly, they seem to suggest that they use variable compression when downloading images from the camera.

[Rocket Pooch]

The USA price point is $299 so its bound to be £299 here at least.

I also suppose you could allways stick a Peltier on the heat sink with another heat sink and a fan

I think the compression is in USB1.1 mode at 5FPS, but its meant to be full uncompressed 5FPS on USB2 or under DSI operations.  

Looks ok though for a cheapy cam.

[Ian]

300 squids for a SuperHAD based camera is a good price. If they've not hobbled it by aiming at an unacheivable pricepoint that is.