Here's the only problem I have with P2. Let's say you have to shoot a long speech in HD then turn "the tape" over to the client. What do you do?

How long is the speech?

http://www.p2info.net/articles/misc/p2cardcaps.php

Anyway, the answer is simple: record for hours and hours uninterrupted to the FireStore FS-100. Copy the FireStore contents to a portable drive and hand it to the client. Much less expensive than handing over the equivalent on DVCPRO HD cassette tape.

How long? There have been times when I've been asked to shoot multiple speeches during an entire morning session. Who knows if I'd have time to copy and reformat. I'm just trying to think thru a few worst case scenarios. Too bad the Panny 200 doesn't shoot HD tape with an option to shoot on miniDV for SD. During these "transition" times, it's good to have both.

Record to external HDD via one of the laptop tools (Scopebox, Adobe OnLocation, CaptureHD, etc). Record forever.

Too bad the Panny 200 doesn't shoot HD tape...The whole point of the HVX200 is that it's tapeless HD acquisition. If it shot DVCPRO HD to tape, then it would be no less expensive than other tape-based DVCPRO HD camcorders (starting price about $18,000 or so). The HVX200 is the *least expensive* way to shoot DVCPRO HD, and the fact that it's tapeless for DVCPRO HD acquisition is what makes it so affordable.

If you want to shoot DVCPRO HD to tape, then you have that option available; but because that option is tape-based, it's going to be considerably more expensive than the HVX200 (because the primary expense of DVCPRO HD is the tape transport chassis).