Panasonic announces Single P2 Reader

Barry_Green said:
David, say it with me again -- if it was possible, someone would have done it by now. If anyone, anywhere, had any means to do it, I would have moved heaven and earth to get it to happen. But it's not possible. There is not now, nor will there ever be, some $150 USB/Firewire slot reader. Not. Gonna. Happen.

In the meantime -- has anyone tried shoving a Duel adapter into this thing?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ..._US10_SBAC_US10_SxS_Memory_Card.html#features

I'm 99% certain it won't work, but -- might as well try it, right?
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Hi Barry,
Interesting Reviews at B&H poping up on this SONY reader,
(The USB 2.0 data transfer is very fast. An 8gb card takes about 4 minutes to download with this reader.)
2 gig a minute that's not light speed , but at least it may suit some users.
Who Knows, This announced "Panasonic single reader" may just be this Sony reader "rebadged" and fitted with a PCMCIA front slot, and punch them out at the same cost as the Sony ???
that may keep the Bargain hunters happy.:happy: personally i'm going for the Qio, Sonnet's track record at punching out and Supporting great products is well established.

Cheers
Tom Kolinevideo.com.au
 
Talked to an engineer friend of mine about this. He said that the PCMCIA->USB device would actually be a snap (for him) to sodder together. The trick is creating the software drivers to make it work...FWIW.
 
Mike McNeese said:
Talked to an engineer friend of mine about this. He said that the PCMCIA->USB device would actually be a snap (for him) to sodder together. The trick is creating the software drivers to make it work...FWIW.
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http://gizmodo.com/5372981/there-are-no-limits-for-linux-hackers

Apt.

Anyway, gigabit ethernet would be great.

What I am not understanding is this: if we could build laptops with PCMCIA and the entire computer cost say, $1000 (probably a little high considering some of the low end stuff out there that used to have PCMCIA) then I don't understand why it is that just a reader can't be made for less than $1000 or even a lower pricepoint....if an entire computer costs less. I am sure there are marketing and economic reasons why not, but are there technical reasons? I realize this question is stupid because I'm asking about technical reasons behind pricing which is more about whether or not people will buy it than how much it costs to manufacture and develop (well maybe not the second thing) so let me rephrase that.

Is there a reason why a PCMCIA to Gigabit ethernet adapter would be technically more sofisticated than a freaking laptop?

I think this is the root of people's frustration. Laptops are built using off the shelf componenets, the R&D costs of which are being incurred by a company different than the one building the laptops, and are usually sequential updates to existing products. A reader such as this would require extensive R&D by the company building it, and is not a sequential update to an existing product and therefore requires a greater R&D investment (proportionally) than say, updating the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo (again, proportionally vs market size.)

Ok sorry if that was rambly and I think I answered all my own questions. I hope someone gets something out of that.
 
Tom 4 said:
Who Knows, This announced "Panasonic single reader" may just be this Sony reader "rebadged" and fitted with a PCMCIA front slot, and punch them out at the same cost as the Sony ???
Click to expand...
I am 99% sure that can't happen. ExpressCard supports two transfer modes inherently, either USB or PCI-express bus. Cheaper SSDs are actually USB devices in an expresscard form factor, for example.

So this Sony reader is a USB device that connects to the expresscard via USB, so it makes it a simple connection.

CardBus doesn't have an inherent USB option. That's where the expense comes in, trying to get cardbus to communicate with USB, and the layer of abstraction that has to happen to get the computer inside the PCMCIA card to speak to the card reader.

A P2 card reader has to be a computer, so either it's a direct-bus connection to a computer (as in the Duel) or it's a standalone computer that translates its code into USB/FW (as in the PCD20). No simple PCMCIA->USB device can ever work with it without that layer of computer technology in there.

Look at the Nexto -- it can read P2 cards, and it's $2,000. No surprise. It's what the system needs to have, and it costs, especially in such small quantities.
 
Mike McNeese said:
Talked to an engineer friend of mine about this. He said that the PCMCIA->USB device would actually be a snap (for him) to sodder together. The trick is creating the software drivers to make it work...FWIW.
Click to expand...
Yes you can solder something like that together. But it won't work for a P2 card. Many such devices are on the market already, and not one of them works with a P2 card.
 
Ben_B said:
What I am not understanding is this: if we could build laptops with PCMCIA and the entire computer cost say, $1000 (probably a little high considering some of the low end stuff out there that used to have PCMCIA) then I don't understand why it is that just a reader can't be made for less than $1000 or even a lower pricepoint....if an entire computer costs less.
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Economy of scale. More copies = cheaper. When Dell is building 10,000,000 laptops, they can get the whole thing down to $100. When Panasonic is making 1,000 single-slot P2 readers, the costs are going to be 10x or 100x higher.

Which is why I say, just buy the friggin' laptop... :thumbsup:

Is there a reason why a PCMCIA to Gigabit ethernet adapter would be technically more sofisticated than a freaking laptop?
Click to expand...
Sophistication isn't the problem. It's the R&D and the engineering and the prototyping and the beta-testing. Let's say it costs Panasonic 5 million dollars to prototype, engineer, and develop a laptop, gear up the manufacturing line, and put it into production. They're gonna sell ten million laptops, to all that R&D gets spread out on the cost. Five million dollars recovered from 10 million sales means that each laptop has to recover fifty cents of R&D. So the price of R&D, on the laptop, is $0.50.

But when you're dealing with a customized small-run device, the engineering costs, as proportional to the complexity of the unit, are going to be tremendously higher. And there's far, far, far fewer units sold, so amortizing those costs means each unit is going to have to pay back a massive amount of R&D costs.

I think this is the root of people's frustration. Laptops are built using off the shelf componenets, the R&D costs of which are being incurred by a company different than the one building the laptops, and are usually sequential updates to existing products. A reader such as this would require extensive R&D by the company building it, and is not a sequential update to an existing product and therefore requires a greater R&D investment (proportionally) than say, updating the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo (again, proportionally vs market size.)
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Exactly exactly exactly.

I looked into doing this a couple of years ago. I tried to get such a product manufactured. I was told my cost, to build it, would be near $2,000. Needless to say I dropped it.

Which is why I say -- if they're gonna make a cheap adapter, it'll probably be similar to if not identical to the Addonics or Duel. If they're going to make a USB or firewire adapter, it won't be "cheap".
 
And I am dumping a P2 card I shot yesterday right now on my MBP with Leopard and the Duel. Works fine, I just can't update to SL, but who cares?

Dan
 
I just made a partition and a boot drive on a bus powered FW 800/esata enclosure. Installed Leopard and FCP6.
Can I injest P2 with Duel with my MBP on a mobile site? Yes. Pain? Yes? Problem Solved? Yes. Bonus? I can also still run some older apps that don't work with SN.

I just reboot and edit in FCP 7 from the FW800/esata drive.
 
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Maybe true but if you are bound to FCS (for what reason ever) is there another solution than a MAC?



With due respect, it's solely a Mac issue. Or, let me put it another way -- it's only an issue for those Mac users who refuse to look at other solutions. All these "issues" are nonissues for Windows users. Windows users can use the PCMCIA slot, Windows users can use the Duel adapter, Windows users can use the Addonics, Windows users can use the $79 slot reader.

Which is not to say "Windows is better", it's to say: keep the focus on exactly where the problem lies.

So the issue is entirely, completely, and solely restricted to those who want to use Apple hardware. And there is a highly affordable solution available right now, today, no waiting -- a 160GB offload station which costs $350, and with the addition of a $40 adapter it becomes a desktop offload station too.[/quote]
 
Using FCS has nothing to do with it. Offload using a cheap laptop to an external drive. Then plug that drive into your Mac and import the footage. No problem.
 
P2 to go the way of ATRAC and MiniDisc...
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That's 8-Track, not Atrac. Cartridges of magnetic tape with 8 audio tracks (4 sets of stereo tracks). You could jump from track to track to select different songs.

But I'm sure that's way before your time. :-)
 
ripupthehwy said:
That's 8-Track, not Atrac.
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ATRAC did (does?) exist. It was a proprietary form of audio compression a la SONY. It also was as buggy and finicky as a format could get (it wouldn't even play on some of my SONY-branded Discmans). LINK

BTW, I'm pretty sure people still remember 8-Track... don't they?
 
But what about the ATAC?

fyeoatac.jpg



- Mikko
 
I got a Acer 3680 w/PCMCIA slot at Circuit City for under $300 a couple years ago. Use it to dump my cards and network over to my MacPro, works great. I upgraded the drive and added ram and downgraded to XP, but it was good to go to transfer P2 cards right out of the box without any adapters.
 
FW 800 is also a favorite of mine, and as all my machines have it, I also endorse the idea. Hope Panasonic is listening, as it is WE who will be keeping their format alive with our purchases and product upgrades..
 
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