Street Price for cards?
 

I have been making a lot of enquiries from importers here in Australia re. SanDisk sxs cards, as we only have (full retail - AU$1,299.00 for 16 gig) prices on Sony cards here, but I believe Sandisk aren't going to bring them into Australia for a while at least.

Does anyone have any contacts to a card supplier who will be handling the Sandisk (or sony) cards, as I feel there are quite a few of us wanting some competiton for pricing on SXS cards.

Cheers Vaughan

Further to this for Aussie guys, I had a price on the Sandisk 16 gig from an independent importer in Sydney, but it was basically the same price as the Sony 16 gig here in melbourne.

Sad!

Vaughan

Probably help to buy in bulk. A$1140 (inc GST) for 16 Gb may be possible. My present plan is to see how I go with the 8Gb cards, downloading through laptop to external USB HDD. In theory one can shoot all day doing that, but I suspect that won't work in any run & gun job (unless supported by dedicated person). The belief under-lying this is that the cost of cards will fall as production ramps up, which may be delusional!

Serena,

I was talking to an Australian Sandisk & Sony card reseller yesterday, and he said that Sandisk Australia are notoriously slow to pick up on new cards...up to 6 months after their American release before they appear on their price lists.

He also said that Sandisk overseas tend to wait a month after first release of the cards, and then go hard at the market to win market share, so he thought our best bet would be find a reliable reseller in the States just after Xmas and see what sort of deal we could get.

Vaughan

Vaughan, sounds like a good scheme. And we have our compatriots in Sydney who are powerful negotiators!

Sony SBAC-US10 SxS Memory Card USB Reader/Writer for ExpressCard/34
 

At the other end of things, what is special about the SxS card reader. At the roadshow it was stated that any laptop/desktop (Sony, at least) had an card socket that would read the cards. But the cost of the Sony reader is way out in front of all other card readers. Why?

Getting prices on the cards here in the states has been awful.

I finally had one vendor get a price of $1200 USD for the 16 gig cards. The vendor told me they would sell for around $950.

That is more than I thought they would go for. I had budgeted to buy 3 but will now get only 2 (I will get two 8 gig cards with the camera).

Hopefully the price will drop on the cards. Right now they are about the same as the P2 cards.

Dan Weber

I'm sure that when these cards are fully available, those prices will turn out to be much too high (in the sense that the cards will be available for a lot less at other vendors).

Just my opinion.

Things can change but the September press release from Sandisk had the list price for 16GB as $900 and 8GB for $500. Given those are list prices one would think the actual "street" price would be lower, not higher . . . unless prices have risen for some reason.

$1200 USD? That's a mistake; as Craig said the MSRP is $900 for 16GB.

Barry, I am just quoting what the vendor told me. They are the first one to actually give me a price on the cards. Their price on the camera was very good. Maybe they are trying to make it back on the cards.

Sony is keeping everything so secret. One vendor told me the problem was that there are only 40 Cinealta dealers in the whole country. Sony is trying to figure out how to expand the distribution of the camera since they are badging it as a Cinealta camera. They want to do a mass distribution of the camera. This may be why there is a delay in information coming out of Sony.

Dan Weber

Bingo!

This is one of the reasons why we recommend only our trusted DV Info Net site sponsors:

http://www.dvinfo.net/sponsors

There are 3 dealers in NYC selling the camera that I know of (I believe another couple of dealers will be added). Two are on the DVInfo list. One who I trust (really really trust) is not on that list unfortunately.

Chris,

I have contacted several of the vendors on your list but some still have not gotten back to me with quotes. The one that did gave a good price when I contacted them, but quickly raised it when they sent me a written quote.

I have not made a final purchase decision, but I needed a written quote to submit with my purchase request (corporate world). Getting one was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

The problem is the camera is not out yet and Sony is being tight lipped with their pricing info.

I can always buy the camera from one dealer and the cards from another if needed.

Dan Weber

Shows $880 US for 16GB card. That's in line with the $900 I mentioned before.

Where do you find prices?
I´m thinking of buying them from the US as I´m sure they will be cheaper there. That´s if I get the camera;-)

No one in US has card prices yet. Sandisk did have a press release with MSRP prices in September but apparently the dealer suspect that will change and I'm not sure Sony has said anything either.

Given how much lower the camera prices are now (about $6699 from various dealers) compared what the could have been at Sony's "under $8000" I think some are hoping the card pricing may go the same route.

It would be nice to see the "$900" 16GB cards actually going for $700-$750 but that's all just my speculation.

I'm sure someone will jump on the forum as soon as B&H or AbelCine have a price. AbelCine sent me an email this morning saying they still have no price.

Good ting so far from my prospective is that B&H will at least ship the SxS card reader to Norway, so I guess that will apply to the cards as well. (They won´t ship the camera due to restrictions from Sony, makes sense and any way it´s NTSC)

I just got a quote from the Sony dealer in Norway.
They ship the EX1 with to 8GB cards for 54000 NOK ($10000)
That´s down 11000 NOK ($2000) from what I was quoted when I pre ordered in August.
At least that´s good news

The Camera is both NTSC and PAL. Sony is keeping very tight reigns on grey market for this. Apparntly the dealer must register who they sold too and the buyer must register to receive the 2nd 8GB card.

Sony SxS MSRP Price
 

Odd but I hadn't seen the following link before
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...EX_media.shtml

It states a price of 400Euro for 8GB and 700Euro for 16GB from Sony.
The really odd thing is the is from Sony USA site and it doesn't have anything about USA price.

It also mentions how they tested the transfer speed (Sony Vaio specs with 80GB x2 Raid 0).
800mbps / 100MBps

That would mean 80 seconds to transfer an 8GB card.

80 Seconds! Now we are talking. I will use a MBP, no raid. How much slower you think that will be?

All theoritical but I hear it might be closer to the 2-3 minutes range to a laptop/hard drive. Hard drive speeds seems the be the biggest bottleneck. Throughput is otherwise fast. That's why I'm too worried about offload. It can be a little slower than changing a tape but you can keep the camera running with another card.

In theory you can copy and probably start a disc burn in the laptop and go back to shooting.

I am really disappointed by these prices. When Sony announced using non propritory expresscard format I was delighted and looking forward to getting 3 of these cameras:
Transcends expresscard prices at release using the usb bus:
16GB $162
32GB $337
http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/p...ressCard&exid=
I had hoped the price for the same cards using the PCIe bus would be about the same.... a full days filming on 4 or 5 32GB cards for $1350. Now it looks like the cards will be atleast $950 for 16GB and hence $7500 for a full days filming. No way can I afford upwards of $22,000 for a days filming on 3 cameras. (I can't unload on to laptop during the day.) This doubles the cost of the camera and puts it miles out of reach for me... Great Camera but looks like sony's going to make all the money from the cards... and it looks like its tape for me for a long time yet :-(

Paul....
As I see it, It's not an issue for filming. They are used to dealing with reels and short record times.

I could see that having two 32GB cards would be nice for event footage.
That's almost 3.5 HRS @ 1080P 35mb/s non stop.


Also, remember this is the entry price for this memory. This starting point is a heck of a lot cheaper than the P2 rollout!

Hi Craig, you say hard drive speed will be a bottle neck.
Do you think it will make a big difference to get a 7200rpm hard disk in a laptop over a 5400rpm?
I will buy a new MBP to go with the camera and your thoughts will as always be appreciated

Juan Martinez of Sony gave a presentation on the EX1 at the NY Pro Tech Expo today.

He made it quite CLEAR that the EX1 WILL BE ABLE TO ACCEPT THE LESS EXPENSIVE Cards (as he had said in the Spring at DV Expo East). He did say it WILL REQUIRE a firmware upgrade and Sony WILL HAVE TO CERTIFY the cards since NOT ALL of them will work.

He did show a current price of a typical 8GB card that will work with the EX1 once the firmware upgrade takes place at about $190.

He did NOT say when the firmware upgrade would take place nor any details about the certification specs/process.

Craig this is excellent news!
Thanks for the info

Juan Martinez is "Senior Manager of Technology, Sony Electronics." I thought I'd properly I.D. the source in case people start quoting sales reps claiming otherwise.

190.00 for 8GB will be Great for extra cards to have on hand in the field.

Looking at the earlier quoted website of Transcend cards, the specs of such cards are as follows:

"Performance: Read up to 18MB/s, Write up to 8MB/s (8GB~32GB)"

Is this sufficient for the transfer rates typical for the EX?

http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/I...=TS32GSSD34E-M

I am pretty sure that the cards will have to be SxS to work with the EX.

"It read a fair 15MB per second on several machines, confirmed using both synthetic and MP3 file copies. But only wrote at 3MB per second."

This quote refers to the Lexar SSD flash memory ExpressCard...

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/periphera...ssd-254364.php

EX vs HVX tomorrow
 

Sony's Martinez will be unveiling the EX camera right after the keynote address at tomorrow's Wash. DC Govt. Video Expo.
Panasonic will follow his presentation an hour later with a P2 extravaganza as well.

It's a free show, but I wish they would include a free lunch. GVEXPO is held annually at the huge DC Convention Center.
It's the closest thing to NAB in Wash. DC , but not nearly as big.


http://www.gvexpo.com/downloads/Pres...ynote_2007.pdf

No such thing mate ;)

In case anyone is interested, BH Photo Video shows the SBP-16 GB card at $899.99 and the SBP-8 8GB card at $529.95 - both show as in stock.

Only the 8GB shows as in stock the 16GB is accepting orders. This is sort of a bummer on the pricing as they are exactly the same as P2, I thought Sony would try and undercut Panasonic at least by a little.

Odd... this morning the 16GB did show as 'in stock'. Maybe they just added the cards to their system today (or recently) and had the wrong status assigned to it

I was told by a dealer that the 16GB was in limited supply but not the 8GB.