Spoke to my mate about the Itrontics unit. He decided on the itronics unit because after all his reading, he could not find any bad reviews or people dissing the itronics unit. Other units had their mix of good and bad feedback.
The reason why he bought off the guy in WA, is that he's an authorised dealer. Apparently you can get it way cheaper on eBay and O/S - however the word on forums is that itronics in Korea refuse to honour warranty claims unless you buy from an "authorised" dealer. Not sure how true this is, so take it with a grain of salt.
He also took into account that the software from O/S only comes in Korean and that the local sellers can supply the English software - however that is a moot point as you can download the English s/w and firmware from the itronics website - as shown in links at DashCamTalk
http://forum.dashcamtalk.com/viewforum.php?f=5
The Itronics unit has NO internal battery, so it relies on being hard wired into cigarette socket or 12V constant.
If it's via the Lancer cig socket, the camera will stop recording when you turn off the car, as the Lancers cut power to all "accessories". Probably NO GOOD when parked on the street as you wont record any "hit and runs". However if you hard wire it into a constant 12V source (i.e. the battery) you will possibly need one of these -
http://www.radarsdirect.com.au/products ... -unit-pcu/ - it cuts the power to the unit once your battery drops past a selected voltage level, so it will conserve power to allow you to start your car instead of finding yourself with a flat battery.
The power draw of the Cam unit is not all that great, it has a 0.5W inline fuse - so the power draw would be negligible - so you could probably get away with not needing the control unit and tap it into the battery source without running your battery down if you used your car every few days anyway.
I'd also have to question the usefulness of having a dashcam only recording front direction when parked - as you're not using a 2 channel system to record what's happening behind. I guess you'll probably capture someone driving off as the camera is recording in the direction of the flow of traffic.
The actual authorised imported/distributor of the itronics devices is autoblackbox.com.au - but oddly they sell for more dearer than what the dealers sell them for. Go figure! (This is info from the WA dealer).
Here are all the AU authorised dealers -
http://www.autoblackbox.com.au/index.ph ... tion_id=11
So, I'm sure autoblackbox.com.au get these units quite cheaply from the Korean macnufacturer. If the ebay sellers in Korea can sell these units at sub-$200 prices and locally they sell for $330-$370 - then there seems to be quite a bit of fat in the price - so plenty of room to move in price I would hope.
These are the ebay listings....
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_saca ... =2&_sop=15