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I'd bought an electronic item. Took about a month to reach me. The post woman came with a demand for customs duty of about 80 %of the value of the tiny product. As you see our government has absolutely no shame in demanding for anything for anything at whim. No way I'd pay for it. I lost a great deal and the seller was also inconvenienced or worse. Others have received small items without any additional charges, so it's about luck... And maybe even location.

First of all, thank you all for pitching in with your inputs. They were really helpful!

Secondly, I do own a Seagate 1 TB Expansion Drive (with power cord) since more than 4 years, and I am pretty happy with it.

However, I came across multiple references to failures in both, Seagate and WD, and kind of concluded that both are prone to failure and are equally capable of delivering excellent performance as well.

My desktop has an internal WD 1 TB drive serving us since 3 years, and I have no concerns on that as well.

I finally went ahead and bought WD 2 TB (2 nos.) because at the end of the day I had to decide on one. I won't say I have taken a risk by buying WD since it would have been the same had I bought Seagate as well!

I paid 200/- extra and went for Cloudtail as the vendor since I have had previous good experiences with Amazon's "own" retailer.

The landing price for each HDD would be INR 6322 minus 15% cashback.

Also, as compared to Seagate, I paid 400/- less for each HDD, which is not bad considering the prices of Diesel have dropped down to INR 48.77 :D

Once again, I appreciate your inputs!

I was checking for HDDs myself as I have a NAS with 9 GB storage which is full. The WD 3TB is available on ebay for Rs.69xx today. Incase you want to consider that.

That's a internal hard drive... lolz.

:) sorry didnt realize the purchase was for external drives!

This was in demand earlier and then the price had dropped again yesterday and today

http://www.snapdeal.com/product/blau.../656059560877?

most of the power banks have cylindrical 18650 (size is 18mm x 65.2mm) Lithium Ion cells. These are unsafe if not for a reputed brand then its a tonic for risk. Lithium-Ion Polymer are safer, but are costly and not available freely in Indian markets. 95% power banks sold in India are lithium ion 18650. Typically a 5400mAH will have 2 cells of lithium ion 18650. In Aliexpress there are some good powerbanks- prominent amoung them are -Vinsic 20000mAh Ultra-slim Power Bank there was a deal on it last weekend @ $40 , now its up to $ 70. These have good reviews in US Amazon.com IWO is another brand on Aliexpress , Lots of fakes in Mi and other chinese brands , not worth the risk I have PNY 5400mAH from Amazon.in for around Rs 600 since 6 months, does well for charging phones , also powers photon wimax card when power is not there.

The 'online shopping' thread becomes a powerbank thread every few days. There are more than 40 posts now on power banks.

Should we create a new thread and post there?

I have approx 2 TB of english movies and serials on DVD's. I am thinking of backing this up on a HDD, but need something that can be connected to my plasma via hdmi for easy access. Any suggestions on what to buy?

My advice? Buy an AppleTV and you can play anything in your itunes library. Or you can play it on an ipad (or an android tablet, if you download an app) and stream it to the apple TV using Airplay.

The Apple TV despite its name is not a TV as such, it is a small box with a HDMI port that plugs into any standard HD TV. Costs under 5K here, $60 stateside.

Failing that a lot of TVs also have USB ports that you can plug your HDD into and play it directly off your disk. But it can get rather slow and jerky if you have an ultra huge drive like a 2 TB ++ hard drive.

1.You need some kind of streaming device like the apple TV, chrome cast or even playstation etc. Or if you have a laptop/phone that can out HDMI you can connect it to TV and stream movies from your HDD connected to main PC.

2.I have a Raspberry Pi that can stream movies however it is definitely not for you if you want plug and play connectivity. It will require a fair bit of playing around.

3. Or you can perhaps buy some old laptop with HDMI port and make it a media center. (Recently my dad purchased a few used laptops with serial ports for under 3k each for work). In this case the HDD will plug into the laptop directly.

Does your TV have any other ports like USB or Ethernet?

Finally I recieved first of the three orders I placed on Aliexpress. My Magnetic cell phone holder.

Tracking result still is not updated. Two more orders are to be delivered. The wait is on.

Wow. Posted just 6 mins before my post. We think alike. Totally worth it to buy the apple TV.

15 days if you choose HK/SG post. You won't be disappointed if you understand what you are buying and choose the seller carefully.

Will look at Apple TV option. Unfortunately internet speed in India is worse than speed in a little village in the Netherlands. Else would have stored everything online and used streaming option.

Have to look for a HDD based media player.