NV-GS300 coming

Frank Granovski · December 24th, 2003, 05:12 AM

I will be posting a couple of GS400 tidbits at www.dvfreak.com/links.htm in a couple of days. I'm just working on some pages there now.

Frank Granovski · December 24th, 2003, 06:43 AM

I recieved this interesting e-mail from a fellow member. He told me that he recieved it from, well, I think you know who. So I thought that I'd better post it straight away (slightly re-written, of course).

Quote:

A super birdie gave me a not so sweet and sour little song today. It was titled, "The New PAL Mamba She's Not To Be," and here is how it sort of went: you won't be getting the true mamba. Nope. Sorry. It's only for Japan you see. You will be getting a stripped down, GS70 look-at-me cheapie instead. She'll be called the GS120 PAL. There will also be an up'd featured GS70 called the GS200---wow---especially made for hop-along and the gang. To make matters even worse, Panny will strip out the GS100's high-end features to prevent you and your cheeks from even having the pro-looking black version, selling you only a GS400 (which will only look similar on the outside of the black mamba's beefed up pro-like features). Yes, many of you will be tricked into thinking it may be better because it is one year newer...and this GS400 will say "4 Mega Pixel" instead of lil' mamba's 3 Mega Pixel! The trickery comes from the fact that the NTSC is over 3 megs and is only rounded off to 3 in advertising---and in PAL, because more pixels are needed to make the same resolution, it will be rounded to 4 megs. In actuality there will be no difference, but the plain will never know and neither will the sales force, for that matter. This will all take place in months and months from now, as the official announcement for all this is months and months from now. Now one might understand why there are now over 300 PAL users that have the original NTSC MX cams and use their computer as an excellent, fast and clever way to workaround the PAL to NTSC conversions !

For more super birdie songs, visit the supervideo.com pages in the New Year. (2004) :-))

----------------------------------------
I'll just keep my MX3, thank you.

Frank Granovski · December 24th, 2003, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Now one might understand why there are now over 300 PAL users that have the original NTSC MX cams and use their computer as an excellent, fast and clever way to workaround the PAL to NTSC conversions!

And this is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. It is also extremely poor advice. PAL is for PAL-land; NTSC is for NTSC-land; GS100 = NTSC, so I suggest not to buy this cam if you're in PAL-land.

Clive Muskus · December 26th, 2003, 11:26 AM

Frank Said

“PAL is for PAL-land; NTSC is for NTSC-land; GS100 = NTSC, so I suggest not to buy this cam if you're in PAL-land.

I agree with the principle but the playing field is not level so there are strong mitigating points against taking such a strong stand.

1. I think there should be only one cam standard based on the technical merits of the best TV system. If your TV is of an inferior ilk, you get a converter box. They are small and inexpensive. The messy proliferation of TV standards was created for political or nationalistic reasons. We had an ideal opportunity to unify the TV systems during the transfer to digital standard, but we missed it

2. There is some choice in Europe of TV’s, VCR’s CD players etc. accepting PAL, NTSC and SECAM. So if you have got such a system, why not to have a NTSC cam? Especially if it is of superior quality at much lower price.

3. We live in a small global village. I am glad not to travel with a variety shavers to cope with the voltage and frequency variations. because the little “box” in the shaver can cope with them all.

4. Manufacturers take advantage of the various standards by unjustified price extortions. Is it not a fact that Pana keeps all the juicy tidbits for home consumption and sends us depleted carcasses at inflated prices.

There are a number of other relevant reasons for a PAL person to invest in GS100k, but let me come to questions more relevant to this forum.

I am considering getting a Black Mamba and I would like to know, particularly from the PAL people using non PAL cams:

A. The cam has English labeled controls but how difficult it is to cope with using the translated menus?
B. Is the MX500/953 manual helpful for someone not familiar with Pana cams.
C. Will the television NTSC/PAL converter box feed the computer with the correct signal for editing and subsequently burning onto a DVD?
D. Is the down load at the playing speed?
E. Are there any other technical, or otherwise, problems needing consideration?

All help will be much appreciated

Tommy Haupfear · December 26th, 2003, 11:38 AM

Quote:

A. The cam has English labeled controls but how difficult it is to cope with using the translated menus?

English labeled controls? Surely you're not referring to the overpriced SuperVideo kit with English stickers over the Japanese inscriptions.

The menus are easy to navigate once you have the translated menus, external buttons, and error messages available in the popular zip file (found here). I've only had the GS100 for a few days and I've had no trouble navigating the purley Japanese menus.

Frank Granovski · December 26th, 2003, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Manufacturers take advantage of the various standards by unjustified price extortions. Is it not a fact that Pana keeps all the juicy tidbits for home consumption and sends us depleted carcasses at inflated prices

Right on!

Clive, yes, this is what I wrote "PAL is for PAL-land; NTSC is for NTSC-land; GS100 = NTSC, so I suggest not to buy this cam if you're in PAL-land." Of course you'll be able to view NTSC footage with those multi-system players, but the NTSC footage converted to PAL will never look as good as PAL footage shot with this NTSC cam's sister PAL model (in PALsville)---unless you talking Brazil, where NTSC cams are used with their "unique" PAL broadcast system. The GS100's menu's shouldn't be that difficult especially with basic operations---yes, the MX5/DV953 manual should prove very useful.

Quote:

Will the television NTSC/PAL converter box feed the computer with the correct signal for editing and subsequently burning onto a DVD?

The answer is, "no," unless you go for the high end (big, big bucks). For questions "D" and "E," speeds are different; some editing software will only recognize either PAL or NTSC.

Quote:

There are a number of other relevant reasons for a PAL person to invest in GS100k....

Let's hear them.

Frank Granovski · December 27th, 2003, 01:59 AM

There's a couple of good conversion articles found here:

http://videoexpert.home.att.net/index.htm

Bogdan Vaglarov · December 27th, 2003, 05:11 AM

A. The cam has English labeled controls but how difficult it is to cope with using the translated menus?

Yeah, the cams labels are originally Japanese - not hard to figure out once you get used with the place of the most frequent used ones.
Menus... hmmm - depends - if you get a small Kana learning book you can learn Katakana for just 2 days and be very convenient to read the menuse by yourself!

B. Is the MX500/953 manual helpful for someone not familiar with Pana cams.

Yes it's very helpful

C. Will the television NTSC/PAL converter box feed the computer with the correct signal for editing and subsequently burning onto a DVD?

The question is not clear.

If you are talking for linear dubbing from the cams S-video it has to be done in NTSC format. Your European Multisystem TV will cope without any problem to watch the footage straight in NTSC again.

For editing you will be using the FireWire connection and the AVI file generated will be in NTSC. However you can convert it to PAL for the final DVD project.

D. Is the down load at the playing speed?

Yes, there is no high speed capturing via FireWire for DV.
You can do such thing if you buy DVD-Ram camcorder which records in MPEG2 straight on a mini DVD-R.

E. Are there any other technical, or otherwise, problems needing consideration?

There might be slight degradation in the quality of the converted NTSC to PAL DVD final image. But this happens any way depending on the bitrate used for compression to MPEG2 even in the original shot format (NTSC or PAL).

Patricia Kim · December 27th, 2003, 01:02 PM

GS-400. Sounds odd in view of the fact that there was never an MX-4000 - supposedly because of the Japanese avoidance of the use of the word for "four" (sounds the same as the word for "death" in Japanese, although when used for 100s and 1000s a different word is used). So where are you getting these rumors from again, Frank?

Young Lee · December 27th, 2003, 02:10 PM

He's just kidding, you know. ;)

Patricia Kim · December 27th, 2003, 02:30 PM

Tchhh. You shouldn't have said it. Another Fred Garhart episode brought to an untimely end.

Frank Granovski · December 27th, 2003, 04:28 PM

>So where are you getting these rumors from again, Frank?<

Panasonic Tech for the first set of rumours, a "super site" 2nd hand e-mail for the 2nd. :-))

R. Scott Hanson · January 7th, 2004, 02:57 PM

Anyone heard anything about the Panasonic models supposedly unveiled this morning at the 2004 CES?

camcorderinfo.com is posting updates but nothing yet except some lackluster Canon ZR stuff...

Brian De Leenheer · January 7th, 2004, 04:11 PM

Just pulled this off the Panasonic website, no pictures, though.

Brian

http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_el...12&cont_id=582

Tommy Haupfear · January 7th, 2004, 04:17 PM

Thanks for the link Brian.

2.5" LCD on the GS120 and GS200? That doesn't sound like a GS100 unless they plan on giving it the typical Matsushita down-sizing (see also 2.5" LCD PV-DV852).

I love the way they concentrate on digital stills and MPEG4 movies instead of things like frame mode, widescreen, or manual features.

Frank?

December 26th, 2003, 11:26 AM	#19
Clive Muskus New Boot Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Lanzarote, Spain Posts: 12	Frank Said “PAL is for PAL-land; NTSC is for NTSC-land; GS100 = NTSC, so I suggest not to buy this cam if you're in PAL-land. I agree with the principle but the playing field is not level so there are strong mitigating points against taking such a strong stand. 1. I think there should be only one cam standard based on the technical merits of the best TV system. If your TV is of an inferior ilk, you get a converter box. They are small and inexpensive. The messy proliferation of TV standards was created for political or nationalistic reasons. We had an ideal opportunity to unify the TV systems during the transfer to digital standard, but we missed it 2. There is some choice in Europe of TV’s, VCR’s CD players etc. accepting PAL, NTSC and SECAM. So if you have got such a system, why not to have a NTSC cam? Especially if it is of superior quality at much lower price. 3. We live in a small global village. I am glad not to travel with a variety shavers to cope with the voltage and frequency variations. because the little “box” in the shaver can cope with them all. 4. Manufacturers take advantage of the various standards by unjustified price extortions. Is it not a fact that Pana keeps all the juicy tidbits for home consumption and sends us depleted carcasses at inflated prices. There are a number of other relevant reasons for a PAL person to invest in GS100k, but let me come to questions more relevant to this forum. I am considering getting a Black Mamba and I would like to know, particularly from the PAL people using non PAL cams: A. The cam has English labeled controls but how difficult it is to cope with using the translated menus? B. Is the MX500/953 manual helpful for someone not familiar with Pana cams. C. Will the television NTSC/PAL converter box feed the computer with the correct signal for editing and subsequently burning onto a DVD? D. Is the down load at the playing speed? E. Are there any other technical, or otherwise, problems needing consideration? All help will be much appreciated __________________ Clive

December 24th, 2003, 05:12 AM	#16
Frank Granovski Outer Circle Join Date: May 2002 Location: Hope, BC Posts: 7,524	I will be posting a couple of GS400 tidbits at www.dvfreak.com/links.htm in a couple of days. I'm just working on some pages there now.

December 27th, 2003, 01:59 AM	#22
Frank Granovski Outer Circle Join Date: May 2002 Location: Hope, BC Posts: 7,524	There's a couple of good conversion articles found here: http://videoexpert.home.att.net/index.htm

December 27th, 2003, 05:11 AM	#23
Bogdan Vaglarov Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Yokohama, Japan Posts: 366	A. The cam has English labeled controls but how difficult it is to cope with using the translated menus? Yeah, the cams labels are originally Japanese - not hard to figure out once you get used with the place of the most frequent used ones. Menus... hmmm - depends - if you get a small Kana learning book you can learn Katakana for just 2 days and be very convenient to read the menuse by yourself! B. Is the MX500/953 manual helpful for someone not familiar with Pana cams. Yes it's very helpful C. Will the television NTSC/PAL converter box feed the computer with the correct signal for editing and subsequently burning onto a DVD? The question is not clear. If you are talking for linear dubbing from the cams S-video it has to be done in NTSC format. Your European Multisystem TV will cope without any problem to watch the footage straight in NTSC again. For editing you will be using the FireWire connection and the AVI file generated will be in NTSC. However you can convert it to PAL for the final DVD project. D. Is the down load at the playing speed? Yes, there is no high speed capturing via FireWire for DV. You can do such thing if you buy DVD-Ram camcorder which records in MPEG2 straight on a mini DVD-R. E. Are there any other technical, or otherwise, problems needing consideration? There might be slight degradation in the quality of the converted NTSC to PAL DVD final image. But this happens any way depending on the bitrate used for compression to MPEG2 even in the original shot format (NTSC or PAL).

December 27th, 2003, 01:02 PM	#24
Patricia Kim Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Honolulu, Hawaii Posts: 453	GS-400. Sounds odd in view of the fact that there was never an MX-4000 - supposedly because of the Japanese avoidance of the use of the word for "four" (sounds the same as the word for "death" in Japanese, although when used for 100s and 1000s a different word is used). So where are you getting these rumors from again, Frank?

December 27th, 2003, 02:10 PM	#25
Young Lee Major Player Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Orange County, CA Posts: 268	He's just kidding, you know. ;)

December 27th, 2003, 02:30 PM	#26
Patricia Kim Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Honolulu, Hawaii Posts: 453	Tchhh. You shouldn't have said it. Another Fred Garhart episode brought to an untimely end.

December 27th, 2003, 04:28 PM	#27
Frank Granovski Outer Circle Join Date: May 2002 Location: Hope, BC Posts: 7,524	>So where are you getting these rumors from again, Frank?< Panasonic Tech for the first set of rumours, a "super site" 2nd hand e-mail for the 2nd. :-))

January 7th, 2004, 02:57 PM	#28
R. Scott Hanson New Boot Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 14	Anyone heard anything about the Panasonic models supposedly unveiled this morning at the 2004 CES? camcorderinfo.com is posting updates but nothing yet except some lackluster Canon ZR stuff...

January 7th, 2004, 04:11 PM	#29
Brian De Leenheer New Boot Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Waterdown, Ontario Posts: 13	Just pulled this off the Panasonic website, no pictures, though. Brian http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_el...12&cont_id=582

January 7th, 2004, 04:17 PM	#30
Tommy Haupfear Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Greenville, SC Posts: 1,415	Thanks for the link Brian. 2.5" LCD on the GS120 and GS200? That doesn't sound like a GS100 unless they plan on giving it the typical Matsushita down-sizing (see also 2.5" LCD PV-DV852). I love the way they concentrate on digital stills and MPEG4 movies instead of things like frame mode, widescreen, or manual features. Frank?