New Talon on-ride video system

I was at Dorney's opening day yesterday, and Talon now has a cdr!de (http://cdride.info) system installed on it.

I think they are still working out the bugs though. Only half the monitors were working, and they didn't have prices or anything posted.

I was impressed with the quality of the video I saw on the monitors - when I got on the ride I wasn't sure how much of the surrounding ride and such you would be able to see, but even though the cameras are fairly close, they have a wide-enough angle that it's not just capturing a couple of faces the whole time.

Has anyone bought these before? Are they worth the money? How's the quality once you get it home?

Of course, the geek in me was more interested in how the system worked. Soon after my first ride I was trying to figure out if the system streams the video during the ride to some sort of server, or does the system capture the whole ride experience on flash memory of some sort on the train and then upload it when it reaches the station. I did see a whole array of wireless broadband access points installed just above the Talon control booth.

I can only imagine the space and bandwidth required for capturing and uploading the ride video. Not to mention the beating those cameras must take.

Speaking of which, they cameras are integrated pretty nicely into the Talon train, except I found the front row camera installation a bit tacky. There's something about wrapping wires in black electrical tape on a ride doesn't seem very professional to me.

Anyways, maybe once they get the system working right and some prices posted I might go for it.

I like the website's intro video - Vekomas really ARE that rough. *** Edited 5/7/2007 3:37:13 PM UTC by Craig the Coaster Freak***

Cedar fair may be doing this in there bigger parks now. They just installed the same thing on raptor at cedarpoint.

I didn't even think about how they would go about installing cameras in the front row and I didn't feel like waiting the extra 3 - 4 trains for the front. I wonder how much they are going to charge for it.