P2 alternative

[scharky]

In the most recent videosystems magazine there is a small feature on CMS products "fire and forget" drives. This is PCMCIA hard drive that stores up to 5 gigs of data, and costs only $200. So for a measily 1G you could have 25 gigs of storage for your camera, at half the cost of 1 P2 card. Here is the link

http://www.cmsproducts.com/product_fireandforget.htm

now the only question is if these would be compatible. They would fit in the same slot as a P2 card, so I am assuming that there would not be any problem, but what do I know.
I am not saying that this is the end all solution, but certainly there are other solutions than $2000 4 gig p2 cards.

[Tzedekh]

I am not saying that this is the end all solution, but certainly there are other solutions than $2000 4 gig p2 cards.
You're quoting the current price and capacity. What makes you think they'll be current when the camera is released? HDV allows 1 hour on a standard mini-DV tape; 4 GB would be only about 12 minutes, assuming a 24p setting and a reduced (40-Mbps) data rate at 24p (a big assumption, given that DVCPRO-HD is, on tape, always 100 Mbps). For the prosumer market that may no be long enough. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon saw an 8- to 16-GB capacity at well under $1,000, maybe even below $500. Surely Panasonic knows that what's a bearable price for the pro market is probably unaccaptable to the prosumer market, and that for P2 to take off as the standard storage medium for future offerings, prices must drop -- and capacities increase -- substantially.

[scharky]

Oh I absolutly agree with you. I am hoping this won't be the standard when the camera comes out. And I'm sure that Panasonic is indeed aware of this, but it is nice to think that there are other alternative formats for recording available to the consumer.

[xander76]

According to the specs as I read them, though, the mini-hard drive PCMCIA card you pointed out has a maximum throughput of 93-125 Mbps, which is not enough for full bandwidth DVCPROHD and probably not dependable enough for DVPRO50 either.

[Neil Rowe]

..scharky does bring up a good point here though. if the camera simply sees the cards as a pcmcia drive. you might be able to simply hook up any fast enough pcmcia drive. ..pure pure speculation there of course, but i do think he has a good point. the drives may not be fasxt enough right now, but skys the limit in the days to come really.

honestly i think panasonic should eventually develop a pcmcia card that simply wirelessly transfers the data on a sort of secure network to a reciever systems which could be installed in a laptop or PC or some sort of battery operated memory drive bank . so youve got hard disk or solid state wireless memory recording .. of course having the option to directly connect it as well would be good.