Panasonic is slacking with P2

Status
Not open for further replies.
It's just like what Red has done to every other camera company, force them to lower prices or keep up with technology. Or should I say, force them to release their up to date technology and stop squeezing the juice from one lemon and charging top dollar for it !



A friend of mine tried using one of those as a P2 card, but no go.
 
Last edited:
Abaddon said:
Something ain't right.
Click to expand...
Yes, something isn't right. Perhaps it's your perception of the market? I mean, with them claiming to have taken 85% of the European broadcast market, it's obvious that something must be working somewhere, right?

P2 is a broadcast recording medium. It's not a CF card, it's not an SSD, it's something different, and it's doing just fine.

You might as well compare a FireStore to a regular hard disk. In fact, let's do that -- let's take your same example and apply it to the FireStore.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337
Wow, 1.5 terabytes for $129? Something sure must be wrong with the firestore, if they're trying to sell the FS-100 250GB drive for $2700!

Or, let's try it with Sony...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820191058
WHAT? 16GB for $51? How dare Sony try to sell an SxS card for $850...

Apples. Oranges. Commodity computer parts versus specialized video industry parts. Ain't the same, and beating the dead horse won't make it be the same.
 
And as has been said many times, don't buy what you don't like.

I still remember buying 8gig cards at $1,500 each. I paid for them on the first production and have moved past.
But then again, I always paid the premium for SCSI drives for the best real time performance with our edit systems. So maybe I'm not the typical user. Now I use SATA ll since it works for real time speed with our VT5-SpeedEDIT systems. Go with what works best for YOU.

Not saying I don't wish they were cheaper, but it has gotten much cheaper over the years and it's the most stable media I've ever used in the last 30 years.
I'm still a happy camper.
 
Last edited:
those P2 cards are rock solid.. I quote the counter guy at B&H when I asked him why a UV tiffen filter was so expensive, as it basically looked like a piece of glass to me.. and he responded in his thick accent by saying, "...because it's professional"
 
I wonder how much it costs to actually manufacture a P2 card.
Panasonic does deserve credit for coming up with a chinese-bootleg-proof piece of technology.
They are expensive though, I do agree with that. But that won't change, so why trip about it.
 
you pay for reliability, stability, and what p2 promises it does, it does. that's first party products, and you're not gonna see a major price drop unless there is major competition for p2. SD card CF Cards there like 9872349237492734927349 manufacturers for it. why is apple so overpriced? cause on their market level there really isn't much competition with their type of products and their quality of products. or why are follow focuses so expensive? it's a plastic knob that turns? NICHE market, not a lot of demand, not a lot of competition.

unless you see the last 2 things i just wrote go the opposite way, you won't see price drops that are major.
 
I totally agree with the competition aspect of the price issue. P2 camera users have no choice but to use Panasonic's cards or Firestore, so they can keep their prices through the roof. But if competitors were in business of supplying alternatives, Panasonic's P2's would drop. But that just tells me Panasonic is gouging the customers.

There's no doubt in my mind that Panasonic could manufacture higher capacity cards at a MUCH cheeper price if they wanted to. This is not a matter of them not having the capability of doing so.
 
Why should they? The price is what the market will bear. They're selling plenty of cards, just not to you. If they weren't selling cards, they'd rethink their pricing and prices would come down.

As far as "price gouging" goes, remember that $2K cards aren't only being used in HVX-200s and HPX-170s, but in higher-end cameras like the 2000, 3000 and the new Varicams. For those folks, the current pricing is a non-issue.
 
Abaddon said:
There's no doubt in my mind that Panasonic could manufacture higher capacity cards at a MUCH cheeper price if they wanted to. This is not a matter of them not having the capability of doing so.
Click to expand...

No doubt? Then you must have figured out how, engineering-wise, they can do that.

Walk us through. :beer:
 
It's nice to have tons of cash to spend on cards. I'm getting by just fine with my one free 8GB and Firestore.

I just think it sucks how technology is moving so fast all around us, yet Panasonic is still charging so much for so little. Hey, I'm all for the free market, yay capitalism! But it still sucks when stuff like this happens.
 
David Jimerson said:
No doubt? Then you must have figured out how, engineering-wise, they can do that.

Walk us through. :beer:
Click to expand...

That's cute.

You mean to tell me the guys at Panasonic are completely baffled as to how to make cards of much higher capacity and charge less for them. You don't give them much credit, do you?
 
Many people thought different P2 manufacturers would lower the price of the cards, so much for that.

Yes there have been very rapid advancements in storage, and while many of them are announcements, that technology is still progressing faster than P2 storage. But they all have different uses besides just holding data. P2 works, it sells, it's being used, until it's not doing well for Panasonic why would they change?

You'll just have to wait for someone else to make a camera that uses that cheaper storage you want to buy. You might be waiting a while...
 
Hazard said:
You'll just have to wait for someone else to make a camera that uses that cheaper storage you want to buy. You might be waiting a while...
Click to expand...

Don't bet on it.

With the announcement of SDXC, the issue of storage capacity and speed just got solved. And since Panasonic is a founding member, I think that will find it's way into cameras fairly quickly.

The ability to write several hundred gigs at 300MB/s you now have the capacity to write RAW video data in the 2k/4k range like RED.

JVC recently announced two new cameras that use the SDHC format to record.

Something tells me the next product cycle from every major manufacturer will push pro level codecs down the chain, and upper end products past 1080p since the biggest bottleneck (the storage) will no longer be an issue.

The next hurdle will likely be getting the SDXC drives into computers.
 
Hazard said:
Many people thought different P2 manufacturers would lower the price of the cards, so much for that.

Yes there have been very rapid advancements in storage, and while many of them are announcements, that technology is still progressing faster than P2 storage. But they all have different uses besides just holding data. P2 works, it sells, it's being used, until it's not doing well for Panasonic why would they change?

You'll just have to wait for someone else to make a camera that uses that cheaper storage you want to buy. You might be waiting a while...
Click to expand...

No need to wait. I'm already getting by with an 8gb card and 100gb Firestore. I'd love the convenience of multimple high capacity cards, but spending that kind of money as an individual makes no sense. I'd rather buy a new computer for that price.
 
Abaddon said:
P2 camera users have no choice but to use Panasonic's cards
Click to expand...
Or Maxell's cards, or Fuji's cards...

or Firestore
Click to expand...
Or CitiDisk or that new nNovia thing, or Adobe OnLocation or EDIUS or Avid or FCP to do live capture...

But if competitors were in business of supplying alternatives, Panasonic's P2's would drop.
Click to expand...
Competitors are in the business. And prices have been dropping.

But even then, for directly comparable product, the price is the same. That's just the way it is. Sony got in the business, and is supplying an alternative, and guess what? For a comparable-type product, the price is basically EXACTLY THE SAME.
But that just tells me Panasonic is gouging the customers.
Click to expand...
And yet all evidence would point to you just being wrong.

There's no doubt in my mind that Panasonic could manufacture higher capacity cards at a MUCH cheeper price if they wanted to. This is not a matter of them not having the capability of doing so.
Click to expand...
And you know this because you are an electrical engineer, a manufacturer, a major electronics company, or ?

Wishful thinking does not make one an expert.

Simple fact is, you don't know anything about their business, or what it takes to manufacture a card that would meet the stringent standards of every major broadcaster around the world. They do. And if it were truly possible to make a massive profit on the cards, you can bet others would be competing for the business. Maxell and Fuji have entered the business, and their cards cost about the same. Sony and SanDisk make a directly-competing product, and their cards cost exactly the same. Spec-Comm spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing an alternative competitive product, their CinePorter, and cancelled development of it because at $3600 (the price they were needing to charge to make it worthwhile) nobody would buy it. Why? Because the P2 card prices had dropped too rapidly! Ironic, isn't it?

Look, we all get frustrated with these pointless whining threads, so let's drop that. If you want cheap memory card recording, get an HMC150. 8GB for $20. If you want a P2 camcorder, the cards cost what they do. They have continually come down in price, from $500/gigabyte to $40/gigabyte in three years. They will continue to drop in price. No price drops will ever be fast enough for an end consumer's liking, of course. But the prices are coming down.

Can they make higher-capacity cards, cheaper? Obviously. But not P2 cards. They make a 32GB SDHC card for $275. But that isn't a P2 card. The 32GB P2 card costs $1650.
 
Look, I have no idea what happens in the Panasonic labs. But every year a new card is released with twice the gigs. Is it the case that Panasonic is working so hard to produce higher capacity cards and the rate at which they're introducing new products is the fastest possible? Sorry, but I don't believe it.

I understand what they're doing. They're trying to make as much money off of the cards as possible. Charge a lot of money and release higher capacity cards periodically to keep buyers coming back for more. If they sold a terabyte P2 card now for a fair price, each customer would only need that one card for the life of their camera. Panasonic can't have that, so by doing this, they keep the dollars rolling in. Great for them, sucks for us.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top