Varicam 2?

[eLeventy]

ok cowboy..
so the P2 slots are the cheapest parts of the camera.
mmmm..
so whats going on here?
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=72037&catGroupId=14595&modelNo=AJ-PCD10&surfModel=AJ-PCD10

I would be willing to bet that the p2 card system isnt the cheapest part of the HVX camera. Its true you save a bundle on not having heads, but its not like P2 is free.
.. we all know that a PCMCIA card slot costs about $20 to make.. but there is more to the P2 system than just the slot.

Well, euh, actually there is nothing more to the P2 system than just the slot. :happy:

We've been testing the P2 system( SPX-800) extensivly for 2 weeks. Including the $2.500 AJ-PCD10. And guess what, it's just a 5-in-One PCMCIA USB2.0 adapter( well, sort of). Panasonic demoed a brandless PCMCIA-2-PCI adapter and it swallowed the P2 cards just as well. The AJ-PCD10 shows up in Windows Explorer as 5 separate removable drives, the PCI card showed up as 1 removable drive ( with 1 PCMCIA slot) or as 2 removable drives( with a double PCMCIA-to-PCI adapter).

The reason they demoed the PCI card whas to show the potential speed of the P2 card. The AJ-PCD10 is a USB-2.0 device, which is a serious bottleneck( burst datarate 480mbps, but actual throughput is about 300mbps or less). They've hinted at a future Firewire version of the AJ-PCD10.

My $0.2, get a cheap pcmcia adapter, it will work just as well. If you don't mind sticking P2 cards in the back-end of your PC, get a PCI version for faster throughput.

Interestingly, the P2 Store worked rather oddly, if memory serves me right: When we plugged it in, we ended up with 15 (!!) removable drives in windows explorer. My guess, it's a HDD with 15 partitions of 4 or 8Gb, 1 for each card. Not that handy. An off-the-shelf HDD might have to work in the same manner for dumping P2-cards.

 

[steindj]

Yes... please no more economics!!

Hehehe, no problem!!

But...it is helpful if you're trying to guage the viability of a business or projects in your location, and this would include the production companies that many on this forum hope to start. 90% of small businesses are gone in five years because people just refuse to sufficiently analyze their market.

 

[Jarred Land]

Eleventy... I understand the P2 slot is just a slot.. but there is more to just the slot than the slot if you know what i mean.. beyond the slots there is the Guts, the R&D costs for the indexing etc... im gonna stop talking about the non-hard costs here cause nobody seems to understand.

The point I was just trying to make was someone asked how P2 could cost $3000, and I pointed them to the slot alone that was $2500. I know in the real world that PCD10 is overpriced.. but you gotta start thinking that way when your talking economics of scale.

Take a look at the P2 deck... if P2 was just a slot the deck wouldnt cost $15,000 .. cause that deck has almost everything you get inside the camera.

http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/news/news04_nab_10.asp

The P2 store partitioned into 15 drives isnt that odd.. it takes and formats each card and stores it in an isolated partition, keep you organized that way and is a more secure way of storing the data for short term. this is more important for when your P2 cards have rollover from one card to the next.