NAB: 32GB P2 Cards For VidPros Coming Later This Year

M

Media Productions Canada

Active member
Info from Giz modo.com

Today at the Panasonic event at NAB, the company let it be known that by the end of the year it will be shipping 32GB cards for its HPX500. Yeah it is a $14,000 dollar camera you don't care about, but the announcement of the 32-gig card is a great road map to where the solid state technology is headed. The 32GB cards will sell for around $1800, causing the current 16GB cards to drop to $900, the 8GB will fall to $700, and the 4GB cards will hover around $600. When laptop manufacturers adopt flash memory for their internal hard drives, $1800 is going to seem like an insane price to have for these cards that will allow you to record two hours of DVCPro video.
Take the jump for the really confusing price structure map delivered as only Panasonic can do it.
 
I thought the 8 gigs had allready dropped to 700, but regardless, what's with the 4 gigs cards for 600. That should be 300
 
Panasonic charges so much for the cards because they can. If you want to look at it from their perspective, the huge profit margins pay for their R&D on the camera and P2 in general.

However, when the Sony drops and comes out with 1 hour record times on 16gig cards, 32 will have to drop to remain competitive, and you'll see prices come crashing down, similar to what SD cards are going for, plus a little more. But Panasonic has no need to do that right now since they're making good money.
 
When will the 16GB cards be available anyways? Mid to end of may?

I will order 2 of them then instead of buying a FS.100...

The feeling of P2 cards is a better one, to me..
 
darn... I love them 4 gigers.. So convenient and was hoping to be able to get them for a 200 a piece by the end of the year.


I want the 16 gig cards though.. and I'm hoping to be able to take out the HD in the p2store and use that. Any word on that being a possiblity? I hope so or I'd be bumming..
 
mrWr0ng said:
when the Sony drops and comes out with 1 hour record times on 16gig cards, 32 will have to drop to remain competitive, and you'll see prices come crashing down, similar to what SD cards are going for, plus a little more.
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What is brilliant is that the 16GB ExpressCard will enter the market soon at a mere $250.00 and yet they are much faster than a P2 card... While Panasonic owners have generally been willing to put up with a lot to maintain that wonderful Panasonic gamma and colorimetry in their images, the cost differences are shaping up to be astronomical between the two storage systems. At those prices, it will be tough to justify sticking with P2 cards for future / additional camera purchases... Of course, none of this really affects my business today. But it's sad to see such an innovative company fall by the wayside with high prices on a aging media format, which by its nature, simply cannot compete with ExpressCard pricing. Let's hope the Sony camera really sucks so we still have a reason to be proud of our Panasonic cameras!
 
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Hey Justyn what do you mean by take out the HD in p2 store and use that? And Barry what's the logic as a few people have noticed, of having 700$ 8 gig cards? I would almost assume they wanted to get rid of them, not make them seem like a hard to get item. Is it because the 16's are not quite available yet at 900, and we are playing carrot in front of the horses nose? Will anyone realistically be able to start purchasing 16 gig cards that soon? Thanks for the info.
 
colormeter said:
What is brilliant is that the 16GB ExpressCard will enter the market soon at a mere $250.00 and yet they are much faster than a P2 card... While Panasonic owners have generally been willing to put up with a lot to maintain that wonderful Panasonic gamma and colorimetry in their images, the cost differences are shaping up to be astronomical between the two storage systems. At those prices, it will be tough to justify sticking with P2 cards for future / additional camera purchases... Of course, none of this really affects my business today. But it's sad to see such an innovative company fall by the wayside with high prices on a aging media format, which by its nature, simply cannot compete with ExpressCard pricing. Let's hope the Sony camera really sucks so we still have a reason to be proud of our Panasonic cameras!
Click to expand...

Here's a thought...

Would it be possible for panny to make ExpressCard P2 cards that would fit into the P2 slot via somesort of shape adapter? Kinda like those adapters that let you use Compact flash in PCMCIA slots. I don't know much about ExpressCard or the difference in size.
 
dogcat.. I just remember reading that the p2store was designed.. or atleast it would be possible to put larger hardrives in there when the P2 cards get larger. Remember that from a while ago.. and I hope it can happen.. Putting a 200 gig drive in there would be great with the 16 gig cards...


Also.. all this speculation about a cam that's not even out yet. Be thankful that the HVX has been here all this time and also the form factor and layout of Sony cams is just aweful. Wouldn't care about the quality as the thing itself is a monster.. IMHO... But who knows and I still want a CMOS single chip for my b-day
 
dogcat said:
And Barry what's the logic as a few people have noticed, of having 700$ 8 gig cards? I would almost assume they wanted to get rid of them, not make them seem like a hard to get item. Is it because the 16's are not quite available yet at 900, and we are playing carrot in front of the horses nose? Will anyone realistically be able to start purchasing 16 gig cards that soon? Thanks for the info.
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Near as I can tell, the 16GB cards use a new manufacturing process. The 8's were based on SD cards, the 16's use new SDHC cards. So when they went with 16's they changed the whole internal design to accomodate the new technology and I guess that's really allowed them to cut the costs.

Keep in mind that the 8's still have a very big part to play in the lineup, because the big camera (the HPX2000) can't use 16's yet and won't be able to until August. So all the Fox stations who bought thousands of HPX2000s can't even use the 16's for several months, they can only use the 8's. Because of that, I expect that 16's will be more readily available to the end users than otherwise might be the case.
 
JesterJJZ said:
Would it be possible for panny to make ExpressCard P2 cards that would fit into the P2 slot via somesort of shape adapter? Kinda like those adapters that let you use Compact flash in PCMCIA slots. I don't know much about ExpressCard or the difference in size.
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I know they're aware of the possibility because I pitched that very idea to them about a year ago. I'm certain that if it becomes an issue, they'll address it.
 
Hey Barry are you saying the 8 gig cards will stay at 700 untill the hpx2000 can start handling the 16 gig cards? And we the hvx users will have to pay because of that market?
 
dogcat said:
Hey Barry are you saying the 8 gig cards will stay at 700 untill the hpx2000 can start handling the 16 gig cards? And we the hvx users will have to pay because of that market?
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Don't know how you can spin it that way, but I'll put it another way: we the HVX users get 8GB cards to drop by $500, and we get 16GB cards at half the expected price, because there are now tens of thousands of big cameras out there that all need big cards, right?

I have no idea how the prices will shake out, but from what I can gather there's a new manufacturing process for the 16's. 8's use the SD card technology, but 16's use SDHC. They had to be redesigned to accomodate SDHC, which contributed to the delay; they bear an "R Series" logo, and they're cheaper than expected.
 
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