Is it time for Pre-order yet ? Or should we wait..
 

I have seen pre-orders from few websites and even on eBay at lower price, but the release date is not clear yet...

Do you think it is safe to pre-order the HVX200 or wait a little may be better ? Can we expect a flawless first batch of HVX ?

Also, how do you think Panasonic will handle the (high?) demand for this particular product ?

I wouldn't personally order one yet unless you're prepared to take a chance regarding some of the issues you've raised. That's a lot of money to spend on a product we haven't seen results from yet, and you have to figure out how you're going to capture the video if you plan to record anything besides DV. (The P2 memory is insanely expensive and the Firestore hard drive isn't due to ship until next March.) I'd say it's better to let TV stations and other early adopters put this camera through its paces before ordering one, so early next year would be about the soonest if you want to be on the safe side. (Assuming it even ships before then.)

By the way, my birthday is next March in case anyone wants to send me an HVX200 for testing... :-)

Being first always involves a level of risk, as those of us who bought the first batch of HD100's are discovering. I don't recall anyone complaining about issues with the first generation of DVXs or FX1s or Z1s though. There was an audio hiss in the first generation of PD150s. So, you'll have to consider how quickly you need something, and what your appetite is for working through potential "growing pains". However, tied in with your second question: Basically, if you want one anytime soon, you'd probably want to get on someone's list now. I'd recommend contacting DVInfo.net sponsor EVS -- EVS has a pre-order list and their entire allocation is pretty much spoken for, but there may still be some available. The good thing about the EVS list is they don't require a deposit.

Is it though?

A 4gb SanDisk Extreme III compact flash card carries a retail price of $799.95. A 4gb P2 card carries a retail price of $899.95 (at today's prices, remains to be seen as to what they'll be two months from now).

The SanDisk handles a transfer rate of 20 megabytes per second; the P2 card is four times as fast. Seems like not much more money, for a whole lot more speed.

The SanDisk's street price is around $450, but you can't compare that to the P2's price because we don't know what "street price" will be on the P2 card. At MSRP to MSRP, they're very, very comparably priced.

Of course, there are also a lot of cheap slow flash cards, but the cheaper they get the slower they are, and there comes a point where it's completely apples to kumquats. The Extreme III is just fast enough to handle the job (were someone to create a P2-to-CF adapter), so it seems most directly comparable. And at retail, it's just as expensive.

Well, I suppose that all depends on how deep your pockets are and what you're comparing to. Assuming the proposed price of ~$1700 for 8GB holds true initially, that's basically $200 PER MINUTE (!) of HD recording capacity. Compared to what most of us are used to paying for mainstream video recording options, that's pretty far out.

-
 

Can we expect full retail price (5995$ for the camera only) or "street price" will be available right on release date ?

I'm sorry, i am not familiar with Panasonic MSRP retail price v.s. Street price history.

Let's say i'll wait till march (by birthday either ;-) .. i don't think the HVX-200's price will drop to 5k street price (?)

Am i wrong ?


To be honest, i DON'T REALLY need this camera now... But you know how it is guys.... I DO like xmas gifts.

Ok, i'll wait then....



NO I WON'T!


Be patient little boy.


PLEEEAAAAAASEEE!!

not sure if you can compare the two Barry...

a 4gig p2 card is not one memory chip its made up of four, it has 4 1 gig sd cards raided for performance

a Kingston 1GB 133x (20 megs per second) card that i use in my dslr cost me 107 bucks shipped...thats street price, kingston msrp is $124.00,
so 4 1gig sd cards are about $496 msrp, a 4gig p2 card is $900 msrp ..well not so fast that $404 dollars goes to cover the expense of the p2 enclosure...give me a break

panasonic should try and sell those puppies as cheap as possible to get users hooked...if the try and nickle and dime on the media here come the hacks...and i welcome them with open arms...

ohh and by the way that kingston card is no knock off, its the real deal high quality stuff in there...

4 gig p2 card should cost $400 (msrp per sd card 1gig 133xrated $124)
8 gig p2 card should cost $800 (msrp per sd card 2gig 133xrated $203)
16 gig p2 card should cost $2800 (pretec makes a 133xrated 4gig card $699msrp)

Street price can be driven by demand, but it's not common for these cameras to come out at full MSRP. The Sony Z1 has a $5946 MSRP, but was available for $4900 from the first day. The JVC HD100 has an MSRP of $6295, but I doubt anyone in the US has paid more than $5500 for it. So, presumably, the HVX will also enjoy a discount from MSRP, but (as always) that remains to be seen. Some dealers are advertising pre-orders for less than MSRP.

Even though there will probably be a lower "street price" than MSRP, that street price will probably hold firm until pent-up demand is filled. Then, the longer it's out, the price would likely drift lower. The FX1 started out at $3699, then went to $3499, then $3299, and I just checked and B&H now has it at $3129. The Z1 hasn't been out as long, but it's come down from $4900 to $4699, and Zotz has advertised it at $4500 before.

thats some MSRP drop $500 for a 4gig p2 card...i hope it will happen, lets see, someone mentioned a $240msrp at SATIS for a 4gigp2

but prices eventually will come down, the only doubt is how soon will larger capacities arrive at down to earth prices...a 16gig card is on its way no doubt thanks to pretec, but an 32gig p2 card? that might be a long way off from mainstream, as an 8gig sd still has not been invented yet...

i'm definitively not heading for the Camera+2x8gb cards package @ 10k

It is well-knowned that memory price always drop after xmas rush. Anyway, memory price always drop, period. I think i can live for few months without shooting HD and just getting more familiar with the camera functions/feeling.

I think we will see a slight price drop on P2-cards but I think it's more likely that the capacity will increase and the price stay about the same. As I recall the memory prices is about the same but the capacity has vastly grown.

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Are we too confident that memory capacity will always increase ? There is no physical limitation on how much memory you can put on such small item ? Can we really think about a futur that will use P2's 64gb, 128gb, 256gb cards ? I don't think we can rely on this for a moment, unless you're ready to wait for the HVX-500 SHD 1620p... and then... You'll need even much more memory. It's a never ending battle. Welcome to digital world.

P2 vs other card prices and redundancy
 

Are the P2 SD cards raided similar to a +1 or a 0+1? If it is simply a +0, the SD cards inside better be pretty reliable. Because if one goes, you would loose everything. Ask any pro photographer who has lost an entire CF card's data and they are quite suspect of the technology without some redundancy to another card. Most event pro photographers use 1GB and smaller cards just so if they loose one card this minimizes the loss. So the question is are we paying a premium for P2 over similar sized and fast CF memory SD-ultra-III because there is redundancy? Or, is P2 simply just a proprietary format (with two times failure rate) leading to its high comparative price?

I think that for the masses to seriously think about using the HVX-200, that storage will have to to come down in price considerably. And I think that it will once the camera is released and out a couple of months. The P2 sounds like a great idea if it has both redundancy and speed and it is not double the price of similar memory. A hard drive recording system, being bulkier, and without any redundancy is not a great substitute either.

Most of us using mini-DV are used to having a few data dropouts now and then when capturing from tape. But all in all, tape has proved to be VERY reliable. Imagine if when we hit a dropout the rest, or maybe the entire tape became unusable and you will understand why redundancy is worth paying a premium for. So my question is if P2 has redundancy or not. If it does, it is probably a bargain now in comparison with other solid state memory cards. If not, this is a real concern to me.

Since there are 4 cards in them, I think it's pretty good guess it's a RAID 0+1 or similar.

If p2's are 0+1 then this justifies the price being double of the other memory. And this was the right design.

RAID 1 would cut the effective capacity in half; a 16GB P2 would store only 8GB of data. Panasonic uses RAID 0 in the P2 cards, giving the full advertised capacity (4 x 4GB CF cards in a P2 = 16GB).

Part of the cost premium is because Panasonic uses only zero-defect CF cards in P2 (see: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47737). I have no idea what magic the P2 controller chip might do. But if I was designing something like a P2 card, rather than cut the capacity of expensive CF cards in half with RAID 1, I'd have my clever engineers design at least a minimal fault tolerance into the P2's firmware so that a few bad bits amongst billions wouldn't cause the user any problems. But that's just me, the non-engineer, thinking.

Here's a link to an advertising PDF that has some useful information on the P2: ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasoni...pers/P2-WP.pdf

P2 has been used in the pro market for over a year now. If it is successful in that market, I'd be inclined to think it must be pretty reliable. But rather than only wildly speculating, we can ask current users about the reliability history? Anyone with experience?

in P2
 

It's SD memory card, not Compact Flash.

big deal...must have shots are not taken by photographers with cheap memory cards...

all high end SD cards are zero-defect rated, basically, error specification of less than one (1) bit in 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits read

that doesn't mean you won't have any errors, it means there is little chance...

not really, if you look at my post again you will see no justification on any technical merit, maybe justification in the fact that you have no other option for p2, as of now...

The internal memory configuration of P2 cards is probably not a traditional RAID style implementation. This is all bound by Panasonic NDA, and I haven't gone so far as to apply for any licensing or whatnot, but I have considered it in order to dig into the P2 and possibilities related to it. I decided to hold off as there are already a handful of mainstream memory companies signed on as P2 license partners.

Anyway, the closest comparison to a RAID configuration would be RAID 0 or a striped array. But I would assume that the 4 SD-type memory chips contained in a P2 are probably accessed via a multi-channel memory controller. Interleave style memory controllers with multi-channel access are commonplace in both todays PCs as well as embedded systems.

There is no mention of redundancy or mirroring (RAID 1) in any of the available P2 documentation. And it really would serve little purpose on an SD device. The failure rate on memory that meets Panny's P2 standards are less than what most of us experience with tape devices. This is also another reason for the higher prices.

As of right now, P2 prices are (IMO) a bit too high - probably about 35 to 65 % too high. But the prices we see now are MSRP from the sole supplier. As the HVX200 starts to ship and a market for P2 cards expands, you can bet that third-party memory suppliers will begin to offer P2 media. And if history of memory products is any indicator, these third-party suppliers will outpace Panasonic both in capacity and lower pricing.

P2 is going to be a tough nut to swallow for most of 2006, I'm afraid. But it should really take off within a year. ...If that doesn't happen, then we can probably kiss the P2 format goodbye. Which also leads to another point about pricing. Panasonic undoubtedly knows that they will have to get P2 capacities up and really cut those prices within the next year if they're going to successfully push the P2 format into the HVX200's intended market. Failing this task, they will be dead-ending their own product.

Unfortunately, this isn't true...

There are very-few zero-defect rated memory options on the market. While most cards may have an MTBF rating of 1,000,000 operations or more, that's actually not very good. By zero-defect, we're talking about memory chips that have been specifically tested to ensure every bit is functioning properly for multiple operations before being incorporated into a P2 device. Most memory devices ship from the factory with at least a couple non-functional bits. Even the so called "high end" ones. Currently, the only zero-defect SD cards that are available to the general consumer, that I'm aware of anyway, are the Mission Critical series from PNY. And they cost nearly double the price of their other offerings. They are fully tested for every bit to be error/defect free and they have a guaranty.

my kingston sd card is 133x and zero defect rated ...i paid $124 bucks...

Hmmm... Didn't know Kingston was offering "zero defect" memory. What type of warranty/guaranty do they back it up with? I haven't looked at Kingston recently as I've never been a big fan of their products (too many bad experiences with desktop RAM over the years).

But if you paid $124 for a zero defect 1GB SD card within the last 3 months, that would be about right. I can buy 150x 1GB without the zero defect guaranty all day along for about $60 from Viking, Transcend, Patriot, PNY, etc... The PNY SD modules I referred to in my earlier post have street prices of about $130 for 1GB and $290 for 2GB. So we're not far off.

Anyway, with current prices, I don't see where a 4GB P2 card should be more than $470 and 8GB P2 at about $1200 or less. Panny is quoting P2 prices that equate to an $800 premium on each 8GB card. Hopefully we'll see some third-party P2 solutions within a short time of the HVX200 release. But I think we've hashed over all the prices on this forum enough and we're all in agreement that Panasonic's P2 prices are stupid.

I'm not sure we all agree they are "stupid" for the simple fact that you cannot get a SD card that reliablely records 100 Mb/s, so we have nothing to compare it to. All the comparisons above don't address that simple fact.

They don't seem any higher margin wise than any other low volume, ultra-high performance item in any other field.

Volume and 3rd part support will push the prices down, but P2 will never be a cheap as simple SD cards.

OK, I suppose we don't all agree. And the simple fact that a single SD card doesn't reliably record 100Mb/s data streams has been addressed repeatedly. Hence the whole continued discussion of what approach Panasonic is using to multiplex 4 SD-type memory chips together.

Compared to what exactly? There are plenty of other solid-state storage solutions available in niche-market industries. Prices are all over the place and it's hard to put your finger on any specific comparison. The P2 card is a fairly simplistic approach, assembled from commodity components. Makes perfect sense for the intended application, IMO. The best comparison we currently have for P2 cards is to consider the components that are integrated into them... Which means a PCMCIA Type II shell, 4 SD-type memory chips, a simple NVRAM LSI - I bet a 256KB chip would be plenty good here, a quad-channel memory controller - probably timed at 25~33MHz. And a nice 4-layer PCB to hold it all together (which I doubt they use, they'll probably go with a mylar or ABS film printed layer. Aside from the SD chips, were talking components that have a total manufacturers cost of about $7500 per thousand. About $7.50 per P2 card for initial runs and the price should drop as P2 becomes more of a commodity and/or larger production runs are warranted. If we take the price of the proper calibre SD memory in retail packaging and insert that price figure into our P2 calcs, we're shouldn't be too far off. I said $470 for a 4GB P2... That's definitely do-able right now. Even $650 for a 4GB P2 isn't a stretch and would probably still be acceptable to many, but Panny's current list prices are a bit over the top. Keep in mind that there are currently PC card form-factor SD devices on the market, some that handle multiple SD chips. We're only talking about a finely-tuned version of one of these with some high-grade SD chips. This isn't cutting-edge technology manufacturing, these are commodity components. If you want to compare solid state devices to other niche industry solutions, there is currently an Israeli company that manufactures solid-state hard drive replacements for hostile environments and military use. These use multiple compact-flash devices inside a conventional 2.5" or 3.5" HDD housing. Their current top of the line device houses 16 4GB CFII chips in a 3.5", 64GB form factor and costs about $14K. Sound expensive? It is for the equivalent of a 64GB hard drive (street price of an 80GB 3.5" 7200rpm HDD these days is about $65). But look what Panny is quoting for 8GB P2 cards! Even at the currently estimated bundle price of $2250 ea. that's 33% higher per GB than the CF HDD device.

Yes, I never said it would be as cheap as simple SD cards. When I said that $1200- would be a good target price for an 8GB P2, that was taking all these details into account and is still more than double the price of the simple SD card equivalent.

Now don't get me wrong... I still plan to buy the HVX200. And the P2 workflow makes a lot more sense for integrating with what I do and how I would like to do it. Tape solutions aren't where it's at for me and I'm not so sure that the Firestore or similar devices will be a truly better alternative. I'm waiting to see the initial reviews and video shot with this camera before taking the plunge, but I've got an HVX200 w/2x8GB P2 cards already figured into my '06 budget. And in a couple years when 32GB P2 cards are readily available for less than what current 4GB P2s cost, I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about.

I have yet to see solid benchmarks that back this up. www.anandtech.com just did a bunch of tests and the ultrafast drives barely sustained 15 MB/s which is barely enough for 100 Mb/s and nowhere near the 640Mb/s for P2. These drives are priced right around $100 per GB and being produced in gratitous volume. I've yet to see hard evidence of price-gouging by Panny on this issue.

Any low-volume, high performance product - computers, cares, boats, plane, cameras, classical guitars. Lower the volume, higher the performance, higher the price in a capitalistic system. Like the old cliche, there choices "Fast, Cheap, Good" - you only get two.


That's what internet board are for :)

We are getting DVCPro-HD in miniDV form factor with awesome solid state storage for a tiny fraction of the cost of DVCPro-HD deck and we all gripe about it being too expensive.

Sure, I would be happy to see P2 prices fall which they will of course and I would like to see Vegas support the cam. But other than that, there does not seem to be that much to pick about the HVX. Certainly no other manufacturer has stepped up to prove them wrong other than Canon's HD-SDI out which is a very cool feature at the price.

That's the real crux of the matter. If Panny could build P2 cards for half the price, they would because they sell more cameras, more cards, more readers. They have way more invested in making the cards affordable than we do. And little in their corporate history suggest they are content selling a very low volume of stratospherically priced items.

The want the HVX to rule the low-cost DV world and have the impact the DVX series did and has. We shall see (and hope) that they can deliver.

I deliberated tremendously, and then I became very exhausted of thinking about the yes/no conundrum and its thousands of permutations.

I came to the point of necessary justification and pre-ordered the HVX200 with two 8GB cards.

Boom, done, sell XL2, and now I relax and wait. :)

www.holyzoo.com

Thank you, thank you, thank you for that statement. I recall shortly after launching this forum the "arguments" from a member (thankfully no longer with us, for other reasons) about the number of Mini-DV cassettes he could buy as opposed to a P2 card... and how hard it was for me to comprehend that sort of apples-to-oranges comparison. The HVX200 is a DVCPRO HD camcorder, and it is certainly the least expensive, most affordable DVCPRO HD camcorder yet. You can't weigh a P2 card against a Mini-DV cassette (if all you want is Mini-DV, then stick a tape in the HVX and go shoot). You have to weigh a P2 card against a DVCPRO HD tape, and the VTR you'll need to play that tape. But what about the consideration of archiving DVCPRO HD? Sure, you can archive to DVCPRO HD tapes, plus the $20,000 VTR you'll need to play them, but DLT makes a lot more sense and is definitely more cost-effective.

I understand that some folks want to compare this to HDV because of the somewhat similar pricing, but this is not an HDV camcorder. You should look at the HVX200 relative to your other choices for acquiring DVCPRO HD, and then you'll begin to see just how cost-effective P2 is. Not to mention the convenience of completely bypassing the video capture process, since P2 is instantly edit-ready.

Exactly. If the manufacturers could make and sell these things for a few hundred bucks, then they would in a heartbeat. Unfortunately that concept seems to be lost on a lot of people.

That's especially funny because we could start griping about the price of miniDV tape compared to VHS (which you get 2 hours of SP on) why only an hour on miniDV? 1 hour miniDV runs around $4 compared to $1 for VHS plus it's really $8 for miniDV! That's an outrage!

I hereby demand miniDV tapes for 50 cents each...let's start protest!

But seriously, even in the tech field, prices do come down, but the brand new CPUs and brand new hard drives are always, always much poorer price/performance buys the the older volume items.

www.extremetech.com just did an article http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1876770,00.asp on CPUs which are the very definition of "more for less" but the top AMD and Intel CPU's hang at the bottom of the flops per dollar.

Sure, cheap SD cards are everywhere, but don't put 'em my cam. Even if third party P2 makers come out with card half the price, I would not even consider them if they are equally reliable to Panny's.

Same reason I'm obsessive about what tapes I use in my DVX - I've never had tape dropout ruin a shot and don't plan on it. Great footage is priceless and solid state is the future of all storage, so P2 strikes me as revolutionary rather than a pain in the butt.

No, we're griping because the P2 memory is expensive, and the only ways to get around that involve more time and/or money to implement. It's a fair point that the HVX200 is the most affordable way to start shooting DVCProHD footage, but it's still going to cost a few bucks to build an effective workflow around this camera. Whether that makes sense will depend on the circumstances, and it will be interesting to see how that shakes out for various users and purposes.

But I still maintain the question is "compared to what?". Its cheap compared to DVCPro-HD decks, tapes and camera. Just add it up - $25K for cam, $25k for deck and $80 per tape.

Compared to SD card? See my point - that's not apples to apples. Compared to HDV? Again, not apples to apples...

The only even marginally valid comparison is Grass Valley's Infinity system using CF but details are very sketchy (plus the cam cost 5 times the HVX200)

Until there is a another solid state solution for shooting 1080p 4:2:2 100 Mb/s option, i don't see what how the "expensive" complaint can be considered objectively. It's purely subjective as we miniDV shooters have become used to shooting with $3K camera and $5 tapes.

But those of that shot 16mm before realize it's all relative. 1080p 100 Mb/s 4:2:2, variable frame rates and the like can't be done on cheap tape or cards.

Just look at the Firestore - they had to redesign the whole line just to take DVCPro-HD.

When you look at it from the standpoint of "what are my other options for working with DVCPRO HD," then the P2 card prices don't seem that bad at all.

Not needing a $20,000 VTR is a pretty big savings right up front.

The REAL point behind P2 cards
 

OK, all this info is very nice and dandy, but I think most people are missing the real point behind the P2 issue.
For me, and I think for 90% of camera users, the real issue (even if they haven't realized it yet) is that recording to a medium that can only hold just a few minutes of footage is simply unacceptable and impossible to implement in a realistic every day production or workflow.

So the HVX can be a marvelous idea, but until they can come up with a way to record AT LEAST 20 minutes of HD to a card that dosnt need a mortgage to pay for, the HVX will be just a niche camera...... a very small niche camera.

There is a way to record even more that 20 minutes of DVCProHD with the Firestore option. I've been looking forward to seeing this camera in action, but when that Firestore was announced, I can't wait.

As for P2, I think it will be a great option once the prices go down and capacity go up. A bit too pricey for me right now, but the Firestore for 2K sounds reasonable to me.

Ah, it seems we've had a communications breakdown somewhere... Of course a single SD card can't reliably cope with the bandwidth, but when talking P2, we're not discussing a single SD card. We're discussing 4 of them being used in an interleaved, multi-channel array. We must also wade though the marketing voodoo from Panasonic's propaganda department. Panasonic has never claimed 640Mbytes/sec, but rather speeds greater than 640Mbit/sec, which the 8GB P2 cards will handle. The maximum achieveable limit of the P2 design is 132MByte/sec, which is 1056Mbit/sec. This limit is due to the 32bit PCMCIA implementation, which is a long-established standard.

Here's what we know...
P2 = PCMCIA Type II 32bit Cardbus interface
33MHz (because that's what 32bit cardbus operates at)
Maximum theoretically achievable bandwidth = 132MBytes/sec.
Quad-Channel memory controller (probably 33MHz)
4 * 32bit SD-type memory chips
SD interface base rate is 115KB/sec
150X 1GB card = 16.8MByte/sec hypothetical max
180X 2GB card = 20.2MByte/sec hypothetical max
4 * 16.8 = 67.2 * 8 = 537.6 Mbit/sec
4 * 20.2 = 80.8 * 8 = 646.4 Mbit/sec

Here's what we can surmize...
Panasonic is not the manufacturer of their P2 cards, they're OEM and pasted with the Panny label. I have a couple theories as to who the contracted manufacturer may be. All components in P2 cards are commodity items. Looking at the top-teir of the currently available commodity components, we magically get the same numbers that Panasonic's marketing machine is spewing forth. As the benchmarks you've seen at Anandtech show, there are several factors which affect the true speeds these components operate at -- interface design, production quality, environment, heat transfer, resistance variations, and karma. 150X 1GB cards are showing real-world speeds up to about 15MB/sec, but let's just play it safe and assume 12.5MB/sec. In an interleaved system, we lose a few picoseconds per cycle and also gain with some redundant cycles at these rates. The 12.5MB/sec can be maintained as long as the cycle is maintained, especially with a 32bitx33MHz memory controller - streaming video data is ideal for this application. If the P2's memory controller can sustain a 12.5MB/sec for each SD channel and interleave the data, writing one DWORD to a channel before cycling to the next, then there's more than enough bandwidth to go around. We're looking at 50MB/sec (400Mbit/sec), which is 4 times the bandwidth needed for the 100Mbit/sec DVCProHD100 and enough to saturate a Firewire400 connection and close to maximum for a USB2 connection for common external data readers. Due to the higher density fab process and higher rated speeds of most good 2GB SD chips, the speeds only goes up. Panasonic is claiming 640Mbps throughput, which is what the current crop of 180X SD chips would yield in a quad-channel arry and they very well could sustain that on read-only operations. For write operations, it will obviously be slower, however, we should still have at least 5X the bandwidth necessary for 100Mbps DVCProHD recording.

Precisely. So now that we're building a simple memory device in an already established and very common form-factor out of widely available commodity items, what's the problem?

I'm not an uber-engineer, but I am involved to some degree with components manufacturing. I think I have a pretty good idea of what a P2 card can be assembled and sold for... If not for the already licensed chipmakers on the P2 partners list, I would probably take a crack at it. At this point I'm just not sure if it's worth the gamble of the $150K in initial set-up costs out of my own pocket. If it works, great... I could probably expand my line and grow a new startup memory company. If it flops, my wife would be pissed and I'd have to sell all my camera and computer gear and get a second job to make back the money. It's a lot less brain damage for me to simply buy the cards that will be available. That doesn't mean I have to accept that Panasonic is charging a premium for their P2 cards.

Can't argue with that point at all. Hence why I'm still planning to buy. Although, I still see a discrepancy in the storage prices. And the other point you brought up about how a manufacturer will offer items cheaper if they can doesn't always apply... Look at the list price of Panny DVCPRO tapes vs. common price of the ones from Fuji or other third-party vendor. The format is around for years, but Panny still charges a premium when we all know good and well that they OEM their tapes from these same manufacturers who sell them for less. The one truth to economics that many people always forget (or never learn) is that all markets have a certain level of tolerance. We see this every day with countless items and all too often what a product costs to the consumer is indirectly related to what it costs to the manufacturer. Rather prices are determined more by what the consumer is willing to pay or whatever the market will tolerate. Once P2 establishes itself in a more mainstream fashion (which I fully expect it to do), you can bet that Panasonic will still be selling their P2 cars for 35%+ higher than third-party vendors like Viking, PNY, Transcend, etc... Even with that, Panny will probably still account for 30% or more of all P2 sales. This same methodology applies to most other large companies. Just look at what Dell charges for RAM or hard drives. Do they make these devices? No. But many Dell customers return to them time and time again to pay $250 for a stick of Crucial RAM that they could order direct from Crucial for $180 or from a discount vendor for $160.

Yep. Although I'm curious to see how much pre-processing the video on the Canon goes through before hitting the SDI output. If it's a raw feed, then the Canon becomes a no-brainer for a $10K studio camera. If it has the usual pre-process enhancements, then how would it be any better than using the DVX or even the GY-DV100 cameras via component output? The only advantage the Canon really seems to have is that most HD capture solutions have an SDI interface, thus negating the need for a component to SDI converter. So Canon eliminated the need for a $350 component which most established HD capture workflows probably already have. It's also one less component (and power brick) to manage when shooting out of studio, giving a direct connection to a DVCPRO or HDCAM deck.

I think the HVX200 will do this for HD to the same extent the DVX did for DV. Its top adversary will be the XLH1 and I'm seriously considering one of those too (probably in addition to the HVX) because I still miss my XL1 that I dumped in favor of the DVX100 and I occasionally have need for differnt lens options. It's nice to shoot video from multiple cams when I can too. And hey, I'm also eyeing Sony's new compact HDV cam... It has compact underwater HD written all over it. and I won't feel so squeemish about putting an $1800 camera undwerwater as I would with an HVX or XLH1. My insurance company won't be as dodgy about it either.

there seems to be a thought that we should just be happy that p2 cards cost what they do and be done with it...maybe you guys are right..

my point was that if you had the parts and know how you can make your own p2 card for significantly less money...err we don't have the know how... but there is a factory somewhere china thats just itching

4 gig p2 card msrp $400 vs actual bnh streetprice $ 2,099.95
(msrp per sd card 1gig 133xrated $124)

8 gig p2 card msrp $800 vs actual bnh streetprice $ 2,199.95
(msrp per sd card 2gig 133xrated $203)

16 gig p2 card msrp $2800 vs actual bnh streetprice $ NA
(pretec makes a 133xrated 4gig card $699msrp times 4 cards, not sure if its zero defect rated)

it was mentioned that the memory i listed is not zero defect rated, it is...

it was mentioned that why would panasonic hold back, and not sell the p2 cards as cheap as they possible could...well here are my reasons for that

they have a superior recording format and that is the premium you must pay to use it, they invented p2, and for all the rd you must pay a premuim for that...it is expected that stuff with a pansonic label be priced well above cost, and it should other wise jwin or coby would have invented the p2 system

however lets not say that panasonic is making and selling p2 at cost, it is possible to make them at a lower cost, and i expect china is gearing up to to produce half price knock offs very soon, they will be using the hvx in china too right?

ohh and by the way p2 is just an intermediate format, you still need to archieve footage, so you can add $240 to every 200 gigs you shoot if you plan on using a hardrive...at about $120 per 200gigs you should by two for piece of mind...but $240 bucks per 200 gigs is nothing compared to $2,000 per 8 gigs...at least with a vtr i know what i shoot is on a tape, i can hand it off to clients, and they can put it on there shelf, and view it in a year or two or more...i still think the biggest problem for folks like me that don't have the fortune of shooting movies but do all corporate work will be an archieve solution that makes all my clients and wallet happy...i may have to swallow that $20,000 pill anyway...

it could be worse the camera could have a removable lens and then we could complain about the cost of a wide to go with that tele...i suspect we should leave that the jvc and canon fanboys...