one concern
 

I was reading the specs in the press release and something jumped out at me that has me a little concerned. It mentioned that it has a USB2 output, but didn't specify a firewire connection. What does this mean for those of us who would want to record to a hard drive based device like the firestore? Thats an important issue for the kind of work our company does.

New Panasonic HD does have IEEE1394
 

Don't worry then there are other press releases about the new Panasonic P2 camera this is a snippet from one of them:

http://digitalproductionbuzz.com/news.php?newsid=732

The camcorder has slots for five P2 cards and is equipped for maximum connectivity including HD-SDI, genlock, time code, composite video, IEEE1394 (AVC), and USB 2.0. Four channels of uncompressed audio are supported with XLRs, stereo front mic, and Unislot wireless mic connections. An SD card slot is provided for setting exchange.

Now you don't have any excuse please send me your deposit money now ;-}