DVXuser.com exclusive hands on with the HVX200

adaml said:
Could anyone at NAB provide actual dimensions of the HVX?
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Didn't think to do so, but if you look at the article Jarred posted, we got tons of pictures of it side-by-side with the DVX, so you may be able to extrapolate from there.
 
acoreasc said:
Barry or Jared, did you get to see the "dump" drive that panasonic is offering for the P2 cards? Any info on that?
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Yes, they had it there. Hope Jan doesn't shoot me, but I don't think it's really anything that most of us would bother with. It's $1800, and it's using a laptop hard disk at 60gb. But the thing is, the camera itself can do almost everything the P2 Store does. You could buy an off-the-shelf USB2 hard disk, plug it into the camera, and when you're done shooting a take, instruct the camera to go into "dub mode" and it'll copy the contents of the P2 card (or cards) onto your external hard disk.

That way you don't have to use a proprietary, expensive hard disk solution, you could just use a cheap off-the-shelf hard disk. And you don't need a laptop to do that either.

What the P2 Store does is let you do long continuous takes, by letting you hot-swap cards while offloading them. Using the camera itself to do the offloading means you can't be recording at the same time, but using the P2 Store to offload the cards means the camera can keep recording.

So for those doing long continuous event shooting, the P2 Store has advantages (but then again, a regular laptop computer could do a similar job, for a lot less money, but the P2 Store's a lot more portable, but the laptop could be running DV Rack or something similar... ahhh, choices choices...)

I think most of us, who intend to shoot a lot of footage throughout the day, would get in the habit of executing a dub to HD whenever there's a break in the action, or when you're setting up for the next shot, etc. That way you could shoot all day, and at the end of the day have a hard disk full of footage you could hand off to the producer or editor.
 
Jlucan said:
I didn't read the entire thread...but is the lens the same 72mm as the dvx?
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No, it's 82mm. When they made it longer (they went to 58.5mm max. telephoto instead of the DVX's 45mm) it apparently necessitated a wider diameter.
 
Unix said:
how about on a hard dirve via DVrack (I guess HDRack by then)
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Definitely, provided that the computer and program can support 100-megabit data streams, you could totally do streaming to a computer or external hard disk recorder.

is Panasonic the only one with the lincense to make those cards how about PNY, Lexar,Kingston, etc they could make those same cards for cheaper, which will in turn have more people buy the camera because of the affordable media
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Panasonic's been quite open about this, they will license the P2 specs to anyone who wants to make the cards, just like they licensed out the specs to DVCPRO tape so Fuji and Maxell could start making it. If the camera sells well, and there's a demand for P2 cards, you can pretty much count on the idea that there will be suppliers other than Panasonic, just like there are multiple suppliers of DV tape.
 
Philipp said:
Why didn't they just play fair and announce a HD bundle for less than 10.000? That would have been the clou as well. And a fair one.
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Philipp, you've been consistently negative. Please try to give them the benefit of the doubt. For example, you ask why they didn't "play fair" and announce a HD bundle for less than 10.000?

They DID!

They announced exactly that -- the camera plus two 8gb cards will carry an MSRP of $9995.

But in addition to doing that, they ALSO announced that you can buy the camera separately, for $5995. That's a *bonus*, not a case of "not playing fair".
 
jonahlee said:
Is it true that the 8GB cards will be around $1750 now, the same price that Panasonic is selling the current 4GB cards for?
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Panasonic didn't announce the price of the 8gb cards. They did announce a bundle deal where you get two 8gb cards in addition to the camera for $9995, vs. the camera alone for $5995, so one could extrapolate that an 8gb card will be $2000. However, there's a disclaimer that says something like "bundle pricing does not necessarily reflect the individual 8gb card pricing" or something.

Suffice it to say that with a RAM-based product, it'll be fairly impossible to accurately predict what the price will be until it's ready to be introduced. The 8gb card isn't coming on market until sometime like August, so it could be $2,000, or it could be quite a bit less, or it could be more... I don't think they've definitively said what it will be, and I don't think they can make that prediction right now.
 
Sumfun said:
Barry and Jarred,

One more question. Is that HVX model that you saw a working model? If not, when did Panny say they can give you some video samples?
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Not a working model. Jan said it will probably be later Summer before they have working models with video samples. She specifically said that with the DVX, the first footage samples were released a week or so after DV Expo East, and she's expecting this camera may follow a similar development cycle.
 
Barry, thanks for all the great information.
I'm not sure if you saw my post earlier today (it's been a crazy day), but I'm adding a lot of the info you're giving us to an HVX blog I put together just to have all the info in one place.

Please let me know if that's alright with you.
I don't want to step on any toes by paraphrasing or directly quoting you without permission.


www.videoindie.com
HVX News, Links and Updates as I get them
 
How long for PAL Land and Does the focus have hard stops?

How long for PAL Land and Does the focus have hard stops?

Barry and Jarred,
Great review!!!
I wonder how long we will have to wait in PAL Land for our camera?
Does the focus ring have hard stops? Please say yes...
(I hope it does, unlike the DVX100/A with the rotating focus ring/servo. I just purchased a Century focus ring for my DVX and of course that won't fit the new baby.)
Keep up the good work.
 
Barry_Green said:
Jan said it will probably be later Summer before they have working models with video samples. She specifically said that with the DVX, the first footage samples were released a week or so after DV Expo East, and she's expecting this camera may follow a similar development cycle.
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Hot diggity dog! I'm going to DV Expo East in Manhattan. That probably means I'll be able to report to you guys on the "real" camera, rather that a factory mock-up.

Since Panny are located right here in the Garden State, I'm going to give Jan a little breather after NAB, then ask her if we could organize a little factory tour for East Coast DVXUsers. Anyone who is in this neck of the woods, IM or email me if you'd be interested in such a tour.
 
Well, to tour the "factory" would require a pretty lengthy boat ride, 'cause I'm pretty sure all the manufacturing takes place in Japan... ;)
 
Barry_Green said:
You've just asked the million-dollar question. There is no HD delivery medium yet. About the only way to distribute your work, where people would actually have a way of watching it, would be to encode it using Windows Media 10, in HD resolution, and burn that HD file onto a DVD-ROM, so they could play it back in their computer (although I don't know that Windows Media could compress 2 hours of HD-caliber video to fit onto a single DVD...)
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Isn't there a player that reads WM9 already? I had the impression that I saw that somewhere. Can anyone confirm this?
 
Guys,

I am impressed with this camera. And I don't think Panasonic will disappoint us.
I am waiting until this camera comes out, and to be honest I may get one.
It has been so exciting for me since last week. I couldn't wait for this day to come. Now that it finally did, I am just amazed with the specs.

If I do buy it, I certainly am not going to use tapes. No more MQ or PQ dilemma, no more dirty heads. Enough of those things, cause I live in a very hot country and man, what a nightmare to shoot something.

Thanks for the review Jarred and Barry

All the best

Fidel.
 
Just in case anyone is wondering about actual dimensions, here's a picture of me from NAB holding the HVX they had on display to show how large it is in an actual person's hands. (It's sometimes difficult to tell how big something is in those product shots alone).

IMG_3088.jpg


I think it's better looking in-person than what they're showing on the website, but it's still not quite as cool as the DVX and I would do a lot of things different with button placements, etc. I think if they made the entire thing black, people would be much happier... but it seems that they're trying to "match" it to the rest of their line. Whatever. There is no other camera even close to this price range that can do the kinds of things that the HVX can, and I'm more than willing to overlook mediocre aesthetics in order to have access to everything this thing can do. The sample they had on display was not a functioning model, so I can't say exactly how the ergonomics of it flowed in a production setting, but it was definitely comfortable to hold and carry.

There are a million things I could say about NAB today, but it's 4 in the morning and I have to be up in about 2 hours so I'll keep it short. I will say that Panasonic absolutely dominated the showroom floor... their display was amazing (did you guys get to use the "pro" cams in that mock-kitchen setup? Unreal!) and I really think they're going to be blazing trails in the year to come. I saw JVC's moderately-sized booth, but I didn't even see Sony presence the entire day I was there (they must have been there, but they didn't do a very good job of showing it). It was also cool to see Jared, Barry, Noel, and Jan, and most of all, it was so cool to see that Panasonic truly listened to the online community of DVX users and took everyone's comments into consideration when making the HVX. I think they will be rewarded greatly for it.

Best tagline from the 3D demonstration:

"Panasonic P2 - The only moving part is you!"

(And how 'bout them horses?!)
 
Well, I can vouch for the fact that the HVX has already prooven itself as a breadwinner. I had 4 proposals due yesterday and I committed to the fact that I would not log on to check out this camera until I finished them all. Well damn it made me work fast. Proposals are done and as far as I'm concerned, the camera has already paid for itself.

Thanks for all the great info. The HVX seems to be the exactly what the doctor ordered.
 
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