Panasonic's Single Slot P2 reader.... 2 USB?

F

Flintstone

Well-known member
So I just noticed that Panasonic makes a single slot USB P2 reader, with a MSRP $350. Nice option for the unstable Duel Adapter. But I noticed something totally stupid about it. It requires 2 USB cables in order to work. One for data, the second for power. Is it just me, or does this sound totally nuts? It get's better... in the manual, they specify that both cable length should be the same.... really?!?!?! For power?

For crying out loud.... I have USB powered hard drives requiring only ONE cable! Geez!

Other then the flaky Duel Adapter and this little new toy, are there any other viable options to hook up P2 cards (other then the camera itself) to a MacBook Pro runnng 10.6?
 
Yes! All you have to do is get a cheap Lenovo-brand laptop and hook an ExpressCard-PC Card adapter to it, then connect the ethernet cable from the gigabit port into your network router and share the resulting drive letter that pops up when you insert the P2 card. Use the MacBook to navigate through the network to your new Lenovo PC and copy the files from the P2 card that is resting inside the adapter. Easy as pie!

Good grief, it comes with the USB cables, so what are you bitching about? Would you rather it had an AC adapter for those times when you're out in the middle of nowhere perhaps?
 
ive run into a few usb hard drives that did that same thing. PITA!

are there any other viable options to hook up P2 cards (other then the camera itself) to a MacBook Pro runnng 10.6?
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not for under like $1500, nope. not that im aware of
 
The lenovo route seems a tad off for simplifying the workflow ;-) And will surely cost more then the single slot P2 reader, at an estimated $300 street price for the gizmo.

I just think that Duel are just plain dumb for not trying to write new drivers. They are shooting themselves in the foot. Snow Leopard has been around for quite a while now... lazy bastards. Oh well... too bad for them!
 
No, it's Apple's fault. On the market exists loads of ExpressCard-PC Card adapters that work just fine on a Windows PC, but are not supported on Mac OSX.
 
In my experience, the extra usb is only there just in case the bus you plug it into doesn't have enough juice to power the drive (front-panel or some laptops) but it can normally be powered with just the data cable.
 
subtleinspiration said:
No, it's Apple's fault. On the market exists loads of ExpressCard-PC Card adapters that work just fine on a Windows PC, but are not supported on Mac OSX.
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If the manufacturers want to make these work, then they should provide the drivers. After all, it is their product that is being sold.
 
You think that out of all those manufacturers not one would think to make their product work with the Mac OS? And they don't write drivers for these things anyway...they work under Windows without needing any drivers (other than Panasonic's P2 drivers of course).
 
Pretty much every time a manufacturer makes a P2 product for Mac OS; Apply releases an update that makes the product stop working.

- Mikko
 
David S. said:
If the manufacturers want to make these work, then they should provide the drivers. After all, it is their product that is being sold.
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David, be fair. The Addonics adapter works on Windows PCs, but it won't work on Apple computers even when the Apple is running Windows! And not only under Parallels, it won't even work under BootCamp! There's something about the Apple hardware that keeps it from working.

The Duel is the only one that worked cross-platform, and it was Apple changing their OS that stopped the Duel from working. And then Apple removed the ExpressCard slot from 2/3 of their MBPs and all their MBs, effectively reducing the potential market to pretty much nil for Duel. So why should Duel go chasing after 1/6th the market that they used to have, just to be put in the same precarious position of Apple changing something on them again?

In any case, it's all about to become a non-issue, as the new PCD2 is arriving. And yes, there are hard disks that use the dual-power-cable situation too. I agree with the prior poster -- would you rather it be AC-powered?
 
Barry,

Just a fact check on this quote:

"So why should Duel go chasing after 1/6th the market"

Are there 6x as many folks editing P2 flow on wintels as macs? No doubt wintels own around 85% of the entire computer market. Are there any figures available on the percentage of FCP users in the P2 editing world? Just curious where this number came from.

Mikko,

Not to troll for a fight, but the mac has, overall, a great reputation for successful plug and play hardware. Some companies are more oriented towards wintel, and they always lag behind in the Apple world. If you are an Apple user, you learn who those companies are, and if you need them, be more careful when updating your OS. In my case, I am always careful about early adoption of new system software and haven't yet made the upgrade to Snow Leopard. Early adopters should always beware. Can you honestly say that you should early adopt any windoz upgrade?? This isn't a good vs evil thing, updating hardware and drivers is a business decision that those companies make and live with. There are lots of companies that keep up with Apples rate of change just fine. For example, look at the hardware accelerated editing world.

Respectfully,
Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Are there 6x as many folks editing P2 flow on wintels as macs? No doubt wintels own around 85% of the entire computer market. Are there any figures available on the percentage of FCP users in the P2 editing world? Just curious where this number came from.
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PC users can still get brand new notebooks with PCMCIA slots (from Dell and Lenovo), and much cheaper options exist for ExpressCard-to-PCMCIA than the dual adapter (the Rosewill adapter is like $30).

The Dual Adapter was, by far, mostly purchased by Apple users.
 
Well... if the lenovo or other PC is a viable way to go, why not get a used G4 MacBook with a PCMCIA card slot? Update the hard drive, with the largest laptop drive... and voila, your own laptop P2 store. At least... it's Mac all the way. hehe
 
I didn't think I was being unfair.

However, for years I've maintained that if Panasonic wants to use PC Cardbus p2 cards, it should provide a low cost solution for ingesting them.

It has, and that's good.

EC/34 and the Duel adapter was as dicey a connection as best. I never liked it, and don't like the whole EC/34 slot loading approach for any device, include FW800 adapters, et al.

And the market is moving away from PC CardBus II slot, and has been for years. I think USB3 will be the best way to go.

Rather than getting into a Apple should be doing this for its p2 card users, I think the real question is what Panasonic should be doing for its p2 card users.

It has released an inexpensive USB2 reader and I am glad for that.

The real issue is why Panasonic historically has relegated at least half its user base to less favorable status than the other half.

Mac users have generally received low priority on various solutions for Panasonic developed p2 software than PC users, even though the numbers generally indicate more Mac users than PC users.

That's beginning to change.

My view is that it is incumbent on Panasonic to provide these hardware solutions for ingesting their products, not Apple.

And it looks like it is.

Love to see a USB3 based single card reader, AND Apple to provide the connection.

If I appear tough on a Panasonic, it's because it listens to its users.

Apple really doesn't, and I don't think it ever will.

But it is the 3rd highest capitalized company in the world on market, and it can't do everything for everyone and still be profitable.

take care
 
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ggrantly said:
Barry,

Just a fact check on this quote:

"So why should Duel go chasing after 1/6th the market"

Are there 6x as many folks editing P2 flow on wintels as macs?
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No, I meant that of three MBPs and three MBs, making six total laptops, only one out of the six has the slot.
 
David S. said:
My view is that it is incumbent on Panasonic to provide these hardware solutions for ingesting their products, not Apple.
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And you do realize that from the very first day of P2, back in 2004, six years ago, there was a very inexpensive reader available. When a DV deck cost $4,000 and a DVCPRO-HD deck cost $40,000, there was the USB PCD10 at $1995. And it worked on the Apple hardware too.

From day one.

VERY low-priced, compared to buying a $30,000 XDCAM deck, or any professional tape deck.

From. Day. One.

Then they updated it to the PDC20, which added FW800, which is nigh unto useless on Windows, that port is primarily used for Apple computers.

There has ALWAYS been an inexpensive reader, as compared to every other format on the market at the time.

Now there's an even less expensive reader too.

Love to see a USB3 based single card reader, AND Apple to provide the connection.
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Agreed, of course.
 
And you do realize that from the very first day of P2, back in 2004, six years ago, there was a very inexpensive reader available. When a DV deck cost $4,000 and a DVCPRO-HD deck cost $40,000, there was the USB PCD10 at $1995. And it worked on the Apple hardware too.
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i agree with your logic barry, relative to established market price structures. but for what the PCD10 actually does, i consider $1995 nearly extortionate.
 
I know that's the perception. But here's the deal: what it DOES is let you read P2 cards on computers that don't have the slot. If that's the job you need done, then it does it, you buy it and you move on.

And that was always available. From day one. It's not like Panasonic sprung this new format on the world and left people abandoned. And that's simply not the case. The pieces were always there, it's just that (like you said) some folks don't like the price point.

Yet in comparison to everything else that people needed to be able to work with HDCAM or standard-def Digital Betacam (or even BetaSP!), it was still dirt cheap.

But even then, six years later, what can you compare it to? The Sonnet QIO? The QIO is the only other product on the market (except for Panasonic's own, of course) that does what the PCD10 does, and the QIO costs half as much, but its P2 performance is pretty dismal as compared to what the Panasonic products do.

Trying to calculate what something *should* cost is a losing game. We don't get to dictate what things cost, we only get to look at the finished product and say "yes, I'll buy it" or "no, I won't." People might think that the price of the five-slot reader is high, considering the components in it, but one could just as easliy argue that an XDCAM-HD deck is just a blu-ray drive and some outputs, so how does that cost $21,000?

Point is, you evaluate the total system cost and see if it does what you need, you buy what you need, and you get to work. You don't sweat over the cost of individual bits, or you'll end up spending three or four years frustrated, when you could have just bought the right thing right away and put all that hassle behind you.
 
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