New $350.00 Single Slot P2 Reader?!?! Finally!

First person who *bitches* that it's $350, is gonna get pimp-slapped.

Really, I'm surprised, it's USB2. Of course it SHOULD be USB2, but I'm surprised that it actually is. I figured they'd either go cheap and expresscard ($120) or USB2 and expensive (I thought $800). So this is a pleasant surprise.

Furthermore, I'm surprised they have OSX drivers right off the bat. Hopefully this portends a future of platform equality when it comes to drivers and support!
 
Okay, so -- why two USB cables? Is it just that they want to draw double the power? Or is it possible they've hooked up some sort of awesome raid-transfer type of system where it splits up the data and transfers half over one USB bus, half over the other, thus doubling the throughput? Now THAT would be cool. Of course it'd require your computer having two separate USB busses, but still..

Aw, I bet it's just for power... Even so, nice & convenient that it doesn't require a wall wart.
 
The link doesn't specifically say that any drivers are needed, it only lists the operating systems that are supported.

If this works the same way that the camera itself does (it presents the P2 card as a Universal Mass Storage Device, so no drivers are needed), this is a huge deal. It would mean that one could use GNU/Linux to offload P2 cards for the first time without needing to tie up the camera.

If that's the case, I'll be buying at least one of these.
 
Interesting observation. I don't know who the product manager is, but I'll see if I can get an answer to whether it's Mass Storage Class compliant.
 
The two USB cables are to ensure enough bus power. I have a Glyph Portagig harddrive that uses this type of interface.

Yes, now I can use my macbook!
 
Awesome!

Awesome!

Now instead of buying a crazy priced 5 slot reader or another CPU just to off load I can get 1 of these bad boys and buy an extra card, maybe even two cards.

Thanks Panny for Listening.

Fantastic news!
 
Nice work,
Interesting release timing ?,
P2 reader would need two USB connections, one for power and the other for transfering.
Some devices i've tested in the past have used the two USB connections just for this purpose.
I wonder if it eventually has a power supply port as an option to usig the second USB port some gear may have issues with that much drain on USB resources ?. Time will tell.

I'd love to hear of some transfer times though. if it's as fast as camera transfer it will be OK, if it's slower, well, make up your own mind.
If it's much faster than camera transfer it's a bonus.

I bet it's taken a long time to produce the drivers/kext files, the hardware is not a big issue and is very very cheap.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Yup does it for me at $350 about the right price and allows me to have my macbook pro on location down-dumping to FCP ver 7 at re-wrap pro res and to a firewire 800 7,200 rpm safety drive ready for edit or can be cloned to the mac pro raid drives.

I will still have the G4 as another option but this makes on location editing the FCP 7 are real fast workflow option at last.
 
Awesome!!!

Note in the Panasonic web site link below there is an image of a laptop (MacBook Pro!) connected via a single proprietary USB cable that has splitters at the ends.

http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=394525&modelNo=Content02122010114343665&surfModel=Content02122010114343665

I found this in another official Panasonic document " the PCD2, with two USB 2.0 cables supplied, requires no separate power supply for file transfers and offers total compatibility with Mac and Windows desktop and laptop computers."

The speed of USB 2 is a question mark, it might not be the tool for events with multiple cameras but maybe we'll finally have a mid priced tool there too; the possibly no longer vaporware soonish maybe Sonnet Qio. Sonnet's site shows Feb 15 as a ship date (last week it showed Feb 5 so holding breath = not advised) MSRP $999 but I got a price quote of $781 on a Qio with a bit of poking around... "we'll see"... that's an entirely different animal. I'm just excited about Panasonic keeping P2 viable for those on a budget with a device they will be supporting.

I'm glad Panasonic went with USB. We get a tool that can be used on any computer with two USB ports which keeps the options wide open. Great for Mac users, cool for use with netbooks and finally finally FINALLY an affordable tool to use on desktop computers. And later, when USB 3 matures there will be a great upgrade path for the device- the next generation of it can be WAY fast. I'm sure we'll all be bumping elbows to grab one of these authentic Panasonic supported units at this price point... with drivers written and updated by Panasonic... YES!!!!!!!!
 
Last edited:
Absolutely fabulous news.

Now according to my agreement with Barry, Apple is adding native support to mxf and avchd.

:)
 
That is my only hesitation. Other P2 devices I have tested and tried that use USB are terribly slow, like really, really slow. When I tested the AG-HPG20 last year for this article, http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ag_hpg_20_portable_recorder_brockett.html I recorded that it took 31:14 to download a 16GB P2 card with verification on and 12:31 with data verification off. I can download the same 16Gb P2 card to my old PB G4 in under 8 minutes so the AG-HPG20 with data verification turned off is 50% slower than my PB.

Time will tell. For a desktop, this will be great. For those of us who haven't stepped up to 32 and 64GB cards and are still using 8GB and 16GB cards, this can still be a big factor or if you are doing a multi-cam reality shoot. But at least it is a small, cheap and portable solution that costs very little so I can't complain. If it is slow, oh well, gotta pony up for the QIO or a faster Panny reader. At least it gives us options and options are what we want!

Dan
 
Dan, I get twice real time with USB2 from a 170 with my MacPro using USB device.

About as fast as FW.

But we'll see.
 
Yep, on Windows I get about 2GB/minute. So Dan, your experience is not normal, the USB transfers should be faster than what you were experienced.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top