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P2 card cost/Apple nanoPod
I realize a great deal goes into developing a product and that R&D costs must be recouped. However, it seems somewhat strange that Apple can provide a 4GB product for under $250 but that it costs over $2000 for an 8 GB card for what appears to be a similar type of product(card storage).
I would much rather pay for the camera portion up front and would pay a premium if I knew that the supplies (i.e. cards/storage medium) wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. The HVX 200 seems to be a very attractive product until the cost of storage is factored in. It then becomes one that makes you shudder. Along with that is the predicted availability of larger storage cards that won’t be have adequate memory (>64 GB) until 2007 or beyond. It seems obvious that if that long a period goes by that something else will jump in to make the convenience and speed of the P2 obsolete before it even has a chance to get a foothold in the market.
I am still considering taking the plunge but it sure is a hard sell to my business office when I mention the card price. I’m the technical director at a community college that is very media concious.
Any and all responses that would add to my understanding would be much appreciated.
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6 Replies
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[Tech Dir] “However, it seems somewhat strange that Apple can provide a 4GB product for under $250 but that it costs over $2000 for an 8 GB card for what appears to be a similar type of product”
Similar? Understand that the ipod is playing back MP3 data streams. What’s its rated transfer rate? How fast does it need to be? A lot of MP3s are recorded at 256 kbits per second. The P2 card has to support a data transfer rate of 640 megabits per second. That’s two thousand five hundred and sixty TIMES as fast. Not percent faster, but TIMES faster.
I don’t know how fast an ipod nano is. But I know that SD cards come in at least three speed ratings, and the P2 card is using the fastest of the fastest (which are, obviously, the most expensive ones too).
Also keep in mind that there were many reports published that said Samsung would have to cut its price in half to be able to supply the chips to Apple. This is most likely a bare-bones circumstance to get themselves established, seeing as Apple’s initial order was reportedly something like 7.1 million units! The P2 card will sell, what, maybe 100,000 units? Considering it’s likely at least 4 times as fast, and potentially 2,560 times as fast, and only costs about double what the Samsung memory did (before the Apple price slash), it doesn’t really seem that unreasonable…
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DV100HD is max 100megabits per second surely? Hence the name. (plus a bit for audio)
The points you make are valid however. Nobody will get the price break that Apple is getting for a good couple of years (they invested in Samsung a while back). The P2 cards consist of 4 of the fastest SD cards available (very low production yield, hence high price) in a proprietry hardware RAID configuration developed by Panasonic. Pricing will get better over the next few years but there is no doubt Panasonic are gambling the farm on this one. There are competing technologies out there that might kill off the P2 concept before it reaches critical mass.
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Kill off the P2 concept in a pro-sumer device perhaps.
Our local ABC affiliate just converted/upgraded to an
all P2 work flow for their operations.Lots of them are going P2 or XDCam.
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niche….
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They are going to lose if they dont come out with a good storage solution for this camera….dont get me wrong, this camera looks great on paper….I want one, but they are asking people to take on a niche format at a hefty price…..I hope it works but I am afraid that we will see what we always see in these format wars…and if history is any gauge, well you get the idea…..
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Firestore has a great interim solution and I am absolutely convinced that some bright enterprising group will come up with a firestore like front end for cheap consumer hard drives which are now cheaper per gig to buy than Pro mini-DV. Maybe I’ll call my business advisor, this would be an easy product to make. The could have put this in the camera so you could go straight to a consumer hard drive, but that would defeat the need for P2.
For now I am using DV with a laptop & a firewire/SATA/IDE housing. The housing will take ANY consumer hard drive but these are not good for run & gun.
Firestore is not that expensive ($1500 for 80 gig?) and you can back up later to consumer hard drives and or/DVD via a “simple backup” type computer.
Pro-sumers should probably forget about P2 for a while, but who needs it?
Not me. At least not yet.
S.
Todd Roush
Dreamscape Digital Media
Panny DVX-100’s
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