Capturing from HDX-900 to macbook pro on set

Hi,

My company is making the leap to HD. Our clients own a HDX900 and shoot in DVCRPO HD 1080i. We're looking for a cheap way to incorporate this footage into our Final Cut Pro system. Buying a DVCPRO HD is out, as the cheapest one is over 20 grand. I have run a test here in the office, running a firewire 400 cable out of the HDX900 into our macbook pro. I used capture now under the DVCPRO HD 1080i setting, using a raid 0 firewire 800 drive as the capture scratch. It worked great. I selected non-controllable device and captured tons of footage without a single dropped frame.

My issue is this: I was using a 10 foot firewire 400 cable during this test. In the field we often use a jib or a dolly, necessitating a cable length of around 100 ft to be safe. I have seen firewire 400 cable this long, but I've also heard that firewire 400 craps out at 15 feet and that repeaters should be used for any length over 15 feet. Anyone have experience with this? I'm wondering if I have to hook 5 repeaters together to make this work, or if the loss in transfer speed with a 100ft cable is still strong enough to transmit a DVCPRO HD 1080i signal to the laptop without dropping frames.

Any Help would be greatly appreciated.