P2 in Europe

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
By now we all know how Panasonic's been doing with P2 acceptance overall: some 300+ broadcast organizations are using it, and big operators like Fox, Raycom, Cox, Media General, Australia's ABC, New Zealand's TV3, the Weather Channel, India's NDTV, etc. are all big adopters.

I hadn't been paying attention to Europe, so a few announcements slipped by the radar, but someone on DVInfo was talking about the rapid adoption of P2 in the UK, so I went rooting around. I found a startling amount of press releases on the Panasonic website. Check it out:

British Sky Broadcasting's Sky News have committed to going tapeless, and going exclusively P2:
http://dmnnewswire.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=128652
(and at the same time, they're going to FCP too.)


The BBC's Factual Studios is moving to all DVCPRO-HD and P2 for all their programming. They're moving in two stages: first they're going all DVCPRO-HD (with HDX900s) and by 2010 they'll be all-P2 as well.
http://panasonic-broadcast.com/data/F9416F0B9BC6A6B470EC45AFA5186F58.0.pdf


Germany's ZDF national TV network has chosen to go all-P2 for news.
http://panasonic-broadcast.com/data/F95429B80FC236D1653217F86C5A8EBA.0.pdf
ZDF has 3600 employees, 16 German studios and 19 studios abroad.


Germany's WDR is using P2 systems for its own news programming and its contributions to the ARD national television network.
http://panasonic-broadcast.com/data/F960918094D2C034376CB7792D67C07E.0.pdf
WRD manages five bureaus for ARD, including facilities in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, Paris, New York and Nairobi.


ARD's news bureau in Brussels is also using all-P2 systems.


Spain's Canal 4 and CNN+ are all-P2 now. That brings the # of Spanish broadcasters using P2 to a total of 15, (quoting from the press release):"further demonstrating market acceptance for P2 as by far the most dominant IT acquisition format throughout Europe."
http://panasonic-broadcast.com/data/7A3C392ADF6474A770E03893C997B8AC.0.pdf


In that same press release, they say "Throughout Europe, fully 80 percent of the broadcasters that have made the switch to tapeless production methods have chosen P2 and P2HD as their acquisition format."


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It's the new marketing term. Panasonic's branding everything with the P2HD logo. It just means it's a high-def P2 camera (as opposed to the SPX800 and SPC700, which are standard-def P2 cameras).
 
Hey Barry
I heard from Matthew @ Panasonic (Aust) yor coming to SMPTE in Australia this year.
Is this true?
 
hmmmm....everyone I see here uses XDCAm (with or without HD). I have just been on a pressconference from the UEFA (soccer equivalent to NFL) and there were DigiBetas, JVC HD-1xx, many XDCams but not one P2 cam (I shot digiBeta). So I wonder where they use these P2 devices on news gathering, when they don´t use them for press conferences like that....
But maybe they pop up in the future.
 
I know for a fact that DR (Danmarks Radio & TV) is using HVX200s and P2 technology for a lot of news gathering and that TV2 (another danish TV channel) is using P2. On another note... a major movie production company here is producing a new christmas calendar tv-show using HVX200s and a heck of a lot of 16 Gb P2 cards (30 pcs. as far as I remember)... which is why everyone else in Denmark can't get 16 Gb cards yet because Panasonic gave all of the first 16 Gb cards to them ;-)
 
David Jimerson said:
None of the press releases mentioned Austria.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, our market is not worth mentioning anyway. But those pressconferences are international. There are BBC, ZDF, ARD, RAI (Italy) and so on.
I for myself use the HVX to shoot a TV show for the Austrian American Football League, which is broadcast all over Europe via satellite. The P2 material gets transferred to DigiBeta and then onto IMX-MPEG2 (Cos that´s how the network works). I also shot several other international shows with it and many "small" companies use the HVX. But the newsgathering by big networks to me looks XDCamish all over.
 
Impressive list. At least now it is clear why its not Pana's intention to decrease P2 prices. Sony entered the market just the right time with XDCAM EX.
The PCMCIA madness is getting to the end. :Drogar-Love(DBG):

Either Pana will price P2 where it suppose to be, or game over.
 
I'm sure Panasonic pricing will be competitive with Sony pricing. It always has been; typically Panasonic's been substantially less expensive than the comparable Sony offering. We'll see what the future holds. Right now it certainly is looking like "game over" -- P2's got large swaths of the market already locked up! :evil:
 
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