Hi Noah,
I have many industry colleagues who repair current electronic equipment, they tell me (and I believe them) that most goods built these days are built to last not much more than the warranty period.
I have personally owned many devices that last not much longer than the warranty period, that is where I base my opinions on longevity of current electronic devices.
I believe that as you pointed out above (said on the box, will stop working in exactly two years) that is the case , it's just called another name,"Warranty"
seriously, does anyone believe a R-series P2 card will "Last Forever" , I don't.

EG, about 3months ago I replaced 7 DVD burners in my Burn Tower (with brand new units of course), now two burners in the stack are failing to burn/verify and will have to be replaced, they may have only burnt 30 or so disc's each. they all have 12 months warraty,go figure ?, Nothing lasts forever.
Cheers

Noah, look into MLC memory vs. SLC memory. Two different technologies, and SLC memory will last 10x as long as MLC.

MLC is cheaper. It's denser. You can store multiple bits per cell (hence the "M", meaning Multi).

SLC memory lasts much longer, and you can read lots of articles on MLC vs. SLC when you look into SSD drives.

SLC memory should last for 100,000 rewrite cycles, MLC memory lasts for about 10,000.

As to the question of whether reading the memory will cause it to wear out, I don't think so but don't know for sure. It's my understanding that it's "rewrite" cycles that are limiting the lifespan, MLC only supports up to 10,000 rewrites. So possibly you could read it a million billion times but write only 10,000 times?

Barry - it will be important to me, and I'm sure to others, that if the card expiration is indeed software-controlled, is it based only on the number of record cycles, or is playback also counted. If playback is counted, I will ensure that I use older series cards for frequent playback and the E-series for record and dump once. If Panasonic could clear this up it would be helpful.

Barry,

I believe you got that mixed up :-). SLC memory will last 100,000 rewrite cycles, whereas MLC will only go 10,000 times.

Cheers,
TS

Edited and fixed.

100,000 rewrite cycles?
the connectors will be well worn out prior to that being achieved, in the real world of field shooting, grit etc will get amongst the sockets and pins, and speed up the wear factor.

May I re-say with respect, "Nothing lasts forever".

Cheers

Connectors have been tested to 30,000 insert/remove cycles. But with the bigger cards, it may come to the point where people never even remove their cards. If you had two 64gb cards, which could record 12 hours of 720/24pN footage in AVC-I 50, it's conceivable that you could leave those two cards in-camera all day long, and transfer at night. You'd never need to swap, as you couldn't physically shoot more (in a normal 10-hour day) than you could fit on the cards!

In any case, yes, 100,000 rewrite cycles. And yes, I've asked and been told that read cycles do not contribute to them wearing down, you can read as many times as you want, it's writing that wears out the memory.

Hi Barry,

If the connectors have been tested to 30.000 insertion / remove cycles, does that mean that they failed at that point or did they consider it was their life cycle limit ?. Saying that they are good for 100.000 writes but only testing insert / remove to one third of that, leaves me thinking Hmmmmm.

Bigger capacity P2 cards sure will reduce the need for removal for reading on bigger shoots, but for many shoots as news/EFP/etc, shooting 10-20mins is about the norm.
The two slot P2 camera's will have cards removed /inserted many more times than the four and five slot P2 cameras.
The newer E-series will be welcomed by many users, I doubt whether the R-series will survive the long haul, probably fade into techno oblivion.
cheers

It is my understanding that they had a machine physically plug in and remove the card 30,000 times with no failures, and they said "okay, that's good enough for us." There was no failure, but 30,000 times of plugging it in and out (which equates to inserting and pulling the card 3x a day every day for 10 years) was enough to get the point across.

Why? Many folks don't even pull their cards out at all, using the camera as the offload station. But if 30,000 times aren't enough for you, well... :)

Panasonic has released some details about the new firmware needed to make the E-Series cards be all they can be. Check out the chart on their site - https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro...te.htm#p2_card

And I wrote up a little article on my blog as well - E-Series P2 Card Firmware Updates | CineTechnica

Hey Andy,
Thanks for the valuable information. It seems like Panasonic has kept quiet about this issue as no one has mentioned it to me before seeing your post and I have asked a lot of people about these cards coming out. Seems to me if Panasonic is saying delivery is at the end of May but the the cards will not function fully until they release a firmware upgrade which is anywhere from 1 to 3 months after the cards are available they are not putting their best foot forward.

Hi Barry,

Some folks in News and simmilar demanding areas will insert and withdraw many times during a days work, sure some shooters will never withdraw , so maybe if the tests assumed that 30.000 would be enough, well, Hmmmmm.
I personally would have run the tests to the point of some sort of failure, much like any tests on products these days to determine a realworld lifespan.
Also in the realworld there are issues encountered that can't be duplicated on the "test bench", that may also have a great bearing on longevity.
News crews in my experience generally use smaller cards (8g-16g)as they can have more cards per camera for a days shoot, and off load times are faster than dumping a full 32or64gig for example, and helps to make the camera op to shoot "tight" knowing they have say a 15min limit @ DV50, or 30min Limit for DVCpro25.

Andy, Great piece of info re these new E-series cards, I see that my camera (SPX800)is one that dosen't need firmware, that's nice to know. Interesting that most products on pana's list that are good with the new E-series cards are the older units.

Cheers

I just got my 301 today, I ordered and paid for four 32gb E cards, it has been delivered with A cards so I am very happy bunny!

Hi Gary,

well done, Just make sure they don't want to "swap the cards over" when the e-series hits the shelves.

cheers

Hi Andy,

I read your blog and then spent the next hour or so trying to track down your source for the VFR statement. I think you have it misstated.

From our Compatibility Sheet: Without the upgrade, P2 camcorder and recording equipment may experience error messages when recording over multiple P2 cards (Spanned Recording).
These “REC Warning Error” messages may appear in the P2 camcorder’s viewfinder or the P2 recorder’s LCD screen during Spanned Recording when utilizing the following modes:
a. INTERVAL REC MODE (in DV or DVCPRO)
b. LOOP REC MODE (in DV or DVCPRO)
c. NORMAL REC MODE (in DV or DVCPRO)

Note that all of these are Standard Definition Modes.

d. VARIABLE FRAME RATE RECORDING/NORMAL in the 12p or 15p VFR settings in DVCPRO HD
720/24pN, 720/25pN or 720/30pN (AG-HVX200/AG-HVX200A, AG-HPX170 and AG-HPX500 models only)


This is the part you had me chasing after, as on your blog it sounded like it was in all VFR modes and cameras and it is not. And even better it isn't the more common side of the VFR use, more people do overcrank vs. undercrank. Good news is that it is a quick fix and that fix isn't that far away.

Best regards,

Jan