Why P2 - why not hard drive?

[mainstreetprod]

This is not a complaint - I have an HVX and am waiting on a P2 card so I can use the cameras extra features. But it occured to me - why is Panasonic taking this road rather than building in hard drives? An $800 consumer camera has a 60 gig drive, which holds as much video as 7 or 8 P2 cards. It can't be for archiving purposes - the cards are reused. Is it so they can sell expensive p2 cards? Or am I missing something?

 

[mikkowilson]

Hard drives are large, unreliable, mechanical devices. P2 cards are small solid state, rock solid, electronic devices.

It's a questions of reliablity over all, with size, weight, power needs, etc.. all lined up close behind as reasons to use solid state memory.

Not to mention, you can change a P2 card when it gets full. A built in hard drive takes the camera out of action for a transfer when it gets full.

- Mikko

 

[cici]

edit: we wrote in the same time Mikko..... P2 has no single mechanical part in it, so you can minimize or even avoid many troubles / weaknesses that mechanical devices such as harddrives have:

P2 therefore is much more shockresistant, pressureresistant, temperatureresistant (of both extremes - cold and hot) than mechanical devices in general. Look at the tests that have been made to obtain results for the G-forces that won't affect P2-cards... or the tests in the desert sun.....

No mechanical parts means also: 0 noise (= 0 db) and 0 abrasion. Especially the abrasion may be a big source of problems like life durancy etc. ...

No mechanical parts means also: no irregularities or damages due unbalance and generally less technically complex parts in the camera that all are potential sources of problems (recording heads, all kind of spinning parts, easy breakable thinnest fine mechanical parts etc.)

But also dust and transportation are less problematic with a P2 card than with a harddrive.

Haddrives are an alternative ..... but I don't think a better choice.

 

[dusterdoo]

. . .Also Panasonic presumably has a patent on the P2 technology - they dont make hardrives. . .

 

[David Jimerson]

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