I'm stuck with a laptop, which includes a few USB ports, an eSata port, an HDMI interface and no Firewire/ExpressCard slots/ports. For generic SD/HDV video transfer this isn't too bad as a Firewire-to-USB cable doesn't cost too much and USB2.0 is fast enough to handle a FW400 signal. However, when faced with the "slightly" more hardcore task of capturing HD material, I could really use an ExpressCard slot (for a component like Matrox's MX02) or a direct HDMI input (which would make the MX02 obsolete). I've been Googling these questions for a while now and I can't find a completely totally utterly definitive answer. So: Question: can the HDMI port on the laptop (Acer 5739G) be adapted to accommodate duplex connectivity in software (eg can I plug an HDMI device to the HDMI port on my laptop and capture video through it thus using the port for HDMI input)? Answer: pretty much definitely not (although I'm still only 99.999999% sure). For the most part, though, I'm not sure why this limitation exists in the first place (apparently some copyright infringement issue, which seems a bit daft from a wholistic point of view). Question: The MX02 receives an uncompressed HDMI signal as its input and connects to the ExpressCard slot. This raw signal is compressed by Matrox's scalable compressor on the CPU and written to the hard drive. This is nice, but I don't have an ExpressCard slot: is there an ExpressCard adapter out there, (which so far eludes me as I cannot find it by googling) that connects to either eSata or RJ45 (Ethernet) (both of these should support fast enough datarates to handle the raw HD signal)? Answer: ?