History of P2 cards pricing

cheezweezl said:
let's not forget the business we are in here...

High speed CF cards are plenty fast enough to record anything the cam can dish out. panasonic could have just put a CF slot or two on their cams and called it a day. but they know what they are doing. they went proprietary and now they can charge what the market will pay and they don't have to compete with sandisk.
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Yes we know what we are doing, we made a highly reliable card that is faster than it needs to be, can be rewitten up to 100,000 times, and it does a parity check on of bit of data that goes down. On top for that thethe memory we use is not commercially available, it is more bullet prof than that. We could not have gone with the CF Memory, it would not have served the purpose and in our estimation would not have been bullet proof enough.

And please the CF Fan Boys do not need to respond to this with "oh yeah it is" because it can not do everything that the P2 card does. We are not gouging people on this and I would lose my job if I posted the landed cost on them here, I can say, it isn't the money maker in the program.

And while you can buy so many XDCAM disks for a similar price and you can reuse them, most people don't, they work those just as though they were tape. The card is only expensive if you record once and put it on the shelf. There are cheaper means of storing data than putting it on disk or video tape.
 
agreed :) price is there for a reason, as i said before and CF cards are not reliable. i didn't hear anyone having problems with p2 card ...
 
jan,

don't get me wrong. i'm on your side. i'm a "p2 fanboy":) i paid for my p2 cards and they have served me well. i was just trying to make the point that people need to stop whining about the cost and quit comparing apples to oranges.
 
OK Jan,

I hear you on the price and the exceptionally brilliant quality of the P2 cards, Can you give any idea of when the 64Gig will be on the market, maybe soon , maybe next year. and, what price point will they be , and will they lower the price of the 32's and the 16's and even the 8's.
I don't think Pana will sell many 64's if they are double the price of the 32's.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
k2director said:
I appreciate that you can use the cards multiple times. But the upfront cost is extremely high. Let's say 5 64 GB cards, for 6.5 hours at 1080/24, costs $14000. For that price, you could buy 200 XDCAM HD disks, 50 GB capacity. That's quite a few disks (and they're also reusable, multiple times over...that aspect of the technology is proven). And, of course, you wouldn't have to buy 200 disks upfront. You could buy them as your productions required, which means you can spread your $14K investment over many months.

I'm not saying XDCAM HD is superior, far from it. I'd prefer a great solid-state card, but $14K for a day's shooting capacity is too much, IMO.
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The point is, P2 cards aren't discs. They aren't media. They're hardware. They're removable parts of the camera itself. The proper way of thinking about it is it figuring it in with the price of the camera, not comparing it to the price of media. (For comparison, the PDW335 (1/2" CCD) is about $2700 more than an HPX500 (2/3" CCD) at B&H; that's three 16 GB almost two 32 GB cards' of difference, and not even figuring in all the advantages of P2 over XDCAM.)

P2 cams are memory cameras where you get to choose the size and configuration of the memory and can switch them out on the fly, as well as use the camera's memory directly in a computer. And no one says you have to buy five cards all up front, or get an entire day's recording without ever switching out a card. If you want to do it and can, that's great, but saying that the camera isn't a viable option because it'll cost X in order to do so for the first time is kind of like saying the camera isn't suitable because in order to do everything you want with it, you have to buy another $25K worth of lenses up front. Of course you don't.

It's a different way of doing things from what many people are used to, and people tend to view things through the lens (no pun intended) of what they've always done. But it's a radical departure and isn't properly comparable with the way things have been done in the past.
 
I think we could all complain about something we feel is overpriced or perhaps just out of reach instead?

Either you can afford this workflow or you can't. Sad to see so many complaining on the price differences. SxS ain't any cheaper here in this neck of the woods and I'd trust CF to my $600 Canon HD cam but not to something $5k and over :)
 
Thanks to newer technology, one can use a $36 16 gig HDSC with an express card adapter for the Sony EX1/3 cameras. Meanwhile, the renowned $17,500 Red One uses Lexar rebranded 8 gig CF card without any issues at all. Red One doesnt even have a cover to protect its CF slot.
 
Tom 4 said:
OK Jan,

I hear you on the price and the exceptionally brilliant quality of the P2 cards, Can you give any idea of when the 64Gig will be on the market, maybe soon , maybe next year. and, what price point will they be , and will they lower the price of the 32's and the 16's and even the 8's.
I don't think Pana will sell many 64's if they are double the price of the 32's.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
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Hi Tom,

We are expecting 64's in 4-5 weeks. Approx selling price will be around $3,200 plus GST. 32's and 16's will remain at the current prices for now. We won't be reintroducing the 8's.
 
Rob Myers said:
Hi Tom,

We are expecting 64's in 4-5 weeks. Approx selling price will be around $3,200 plus GST. 32's and 16's will remain at the current prices for now. We won't be reintroducing the 8's.
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Good Lord, that's a lot of money. 4 cards equals the price of the camera. I really hope my P2 cards don't become obsolete by the time the price comes down.
 
Rob Myers said:
Hi Tom,

We are expecting 64's in 4-5 weeks. Approx selling price will be around $3,200 plus GST. 32's and 16's will remain at the current prices for now. We won't be reintroducing the 8's.
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Hi Rob,
Is That $3.200 Aussie dollars or US dollars ? adding GST will take them to $3,520,
4-5 weeks delivery will take it well into christmas , certainly "sad timing" with the current shock market woes.
A five pack of P2 cards to fill my SPX with 64gigers would cost me $17.600
Looks like I'll stay at 32 gig cards for now I cannot justify that cost of the 64's for my situation, But I suppose some can and will, there's lots of guys using P2 at differing levels in this industry, that's why we all have differing opinions.
And may I say we should all respect each others view points, as each of us are in different situations in many geographic locations, with a huge variant of clients, and budgets we have to produce product for.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Hey Lucky studio,

yes, you can use CF cards with sxs adapter, but CF cards itself are not reliable despite lexar's
lifetime warranty. i had a number of them broken shooting out in winter, and a few went down
the drain just during normal usage... when i shoot something expensive, i wouldn't love
to throw my footage... even if it happens once in 5 years, that could be destructive..
 
CF card is not reliable???? Then Nikon and Canon should seriously consider switching to more reliable media for their DSLR
 
hantanbl said:
CF card is not reliable???? Then Nikon and Canon should seriously consider switching to more reliable media for their DSLR
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The arguement there is the difference in video and stills and writing it to a card.

With a still image you write to the card in bursts as you take pictures. With video you are writing continuously while you record. In theory it is harder on the memory card.

My personal thought is that CF and SDHC could both handle what the HPX and HVX have to throw at it if you get the high rated professional cards.

Is it as good as P2? Not a chance. Like Jan said the P2 cards are doing a parity check bit for bit on the card as you right to it so you aren't going to have garbled up or lost footage unless you do something yourself.

What it boils down to is you either like Panasonic and P2 or you don't. If you don't then why beat it like a dead horse on these boards? There are obviously a LOT of people and business' that like Panasonic and the P2 technology or they wouldn't be using them.

When I buy a camera I don't look at just price. It does make a difference for me because I work very hard for my money and I don't have money to blow. If it comes down to say $2,000-$5,000 more to buy a camera from a company I have dealt with before and know I will get rock solid support from I will pay the extra money. Panasonic is one of those companies. You know you can always reach Jan on here for questions and you know there are plenty of places in the world to get your camera serviced. You also know that the P2 technology is going to be around for a while and your camera won't be obsolete two weeks after you buy it.
 
ef03 said:
If you don't then why beat it like a dead horse on these boards?
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I can say why.

Before the release of the HMC-150, the entire Panasonic line outside of the HDX-900 has been shifted to P2.

So if one liked Panasonic but did not have a place for P2, you are SOL, pardon my French - unless you want to use a bankrupt company's Firestore (less reliable than CF cards).

Not a good place to be as a consumer who wants to stick with Panasonic for their move to HD.
 
Well if you want to stick with Panasonic then you would stick with them whether they had a non P2 camera or not.

After the initial investment you save money. There are numerous ways to backup the material so you have options there. What people should be looking at is the cost of backing up your footage. You can use a tape based system or hard drives to do it. Whatever fits your budget.

Look at the P2 cards as part of the initial investment with the camera. You don't buy new ones for every shoot so they shouldn't be treated like expindables. That is exactly what everyone in this forum has done.
 
ef03 said:
Look at the P2 cards as part of the initial investment with the camera. You don't buy new ones for every shoot so they shouldn't be treated like expindables. That is exactly what everyone in this forum has done.
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Not true. Although I wish P2 cards would be at an expendable price. For my situations, having one or two more sets of 4 to go with my HPX500 will be great. I'll tell you guys, once you're out on that remote location, laptops and hard drives will become a drag soon enough.

I like to argue that affordability will translate into higher volume of sales for the P2 cards...but, who am I?
 
pathfinder said:
Not true. Although I wish P2 cards would be at an expendable price. For my situations, having one or two more sets of 4 to go with my HPX500 will be great. I'll tell you guys, once you're out on that remote location, laptops and hard drives will become a drag soon enough.

I like to argue that affordability will translate into higher volume of sales for the P2 cards...but, who am I?
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I understand your viewpoint and agree that lugging around a laptop and some external drives gets old.

That is the point that you have to look at your style of shotting and decide if this camera and media format are the right choice for you. It may not be.

I am not one to go around and say that the P2 cameras are the perfect solution for everyone. They aren't. Sony makes a good product that may fit you better so by all means go that route.

P2 prices will fall. They will have to. At some point panasonic won't have the stronghold on P2 and more companies will start to make cards. Its just like any other technology. It gets cheaper the longer its been around.
 
Wouldn't Panasonic have to LICENSE the technology before they can be manufactured by another company? If Panny isn't making money with the P2 cards why don't they just give it away? Apparently thats moving at the speed of light (I could be wrong :) ) Not sure why anyone would want to get in the business of manufacturing expensive old dying pcmcia tecnology.

I have not heard much about the Fuji P2 cards, anyone know whats up with those? Price in U.S dollars for a 64 gig?
 
Anyone know who sells these Fuji P2 cards and has them in stock? I did a google search and all I found was press releases from a year ago.
 
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