Panasonic at NAB with P2 updates

Post, March, 2005

NEW YORK -- At a press event here, Panasonic revealed details of its plans for this April's NAB show in Las Vegas. The company says it's seen growth in every product category over the past year, most notably in the area of plasma displays, DLP and LCD projectors, 24p HD cameras, and HD cameras and decks. And while it will have several announcements in those areas at this year's show, some of the biggest news comes from the company regarding its P2 solid state memory-based camera line, including hints at an HD version.

Panasonic's DVCPRO P2 series products are fully compatible with the DVCPRO format and offer nonlinear acquisition and instant access to material, along with high-speed file transfer, laptop field editing without requirement for proxy videos, and compatibility with off-the-shelf data storage drives for low-cost archiving. The core DVCPRO P2 products are the AJ-SPX800 camcorder, the AJ-SPD850 studio recorder and the AJ-PCD10 drive. Its solid state design eliminates transports and mechanisms, helping to reduce maintenance costs incurred from moving parts that can break down.

At NAB, the company will introduce the AJ-PCS060, a portable hard disk unit with a P2 card slot that allows users to quickly transfer content from P2 cards to an internal 60GB hard disk drive. The 60GB capacity accommodates content from up to 15 4GB P2 cards. After the P2 content has been transferred, the "P2 store" can connect to an NLE via a USB 2.0 interface. The drive supports Windows 2000 and XP operating systems, and will be available in Q3 of '05.

Panasonic will also show enhancements to its AJ-SPX800 DVCPRO P2 camcorder and AJ-SPD850 P2 VTR. New options for the AJ-SPX800 include 24p frame rate recording and proxy video recording with three quality levels. The 24p option software upgrade allows the camcorder to instantly switch between interlace and 24p for delivering a film-like look for magazine shows, documentaries or cable programs. The new proxy video option (AJ-YAK800) allows the AJ-SPX800 to simultaneously record a low-rez video copy for rapid viewing on a laptop or desktop PC and on a PDA. Users can select from three quality levels: 1.5Mbps quality for on-air playback, 768kbps quality to transfer in almost realtime over a TCP/IP network, or 196kbps quality to transfer via a dial-up connection to the Internet. Panasonic will also offer a cost-efficient optical disc storage solution, the AJ-DVD850 4.7GB DVD-RAM/DVD-R recordable drive, which installs easily into the AJ-SPD850 P2 VTR for archiving.

Non-P2 products to be shown at NAB include the 32-inch TH-32LHD7UY LCD display and the AJ-SD255 DVCPRO/DV recorder, a versatile, half-rack size VTR designed for nonlinear editing applications. The AJ-SD255 can undertake assignments ranging from viewing and dubbing to feeding an NLE system. Priced at $5,500, the unit performs DVCPRO and DV recording and playback with both standard and Mini-DV cassettes and provides up to 126 minutes of continuous recording/playback, permitting the recording of lengthy programming on a single cassette.

Adding the optional IEEE 1394 digital interface (the AJ-YAD255G board) allows the AJ-SD255 to send and receive data in both DVCPRO and DV formats, and also convert between the two formats.