Apple is driving down the flash media price

[Noah Kadner]

The issue of what is proprietary specifically about the P2 port and whether another company would have to pay royalties or could reverse engineer without legal issues would be a good question for Jan.

[Blub06]

The Panasonic web site has the P2 4Gig card at $1799. 4 gig not 8 gig. I have read here several times much cheaper prices on all the P2 cards, a quick visit to the Panasonic web site proves those numbers wrong, unless we are to think that Panasonic is wrong.

The new 200camera is going to be sold for $10,000 with 2 8 gig P2 cards, The list price at the Panasonic web site for the camera is $6000. So, the 8 gig cards each cost $2000 when bought with the camera. This deal has been presented as a good deal because the P2 cards are being sold a a deep discoiunt when bought with the camera. So $2,000 is a price only offered with the camera, they cost more without.

I dont remember where I read $3,400 per 8 gig P2 card but I think it was here or at the Panasonic web site, I cant find this product listed there anymore though.

Chris

[Barry Green]

[Blub] “The drives are so small two of them could fit into a P2 sized format, 16gigs for around $200, WOW”

They could fit, yes, but they’d be way, way too slow. These tiny drives don’t have the transfer rate necessary. The smaller hard drives don’t have the rotational speed to get high transfer rates. Even the big 1.8″ drives are too slow to support a 100-megabit data stream. You really need to go all the way up to 2.5″ before it’s something that could be considered. The 1″ drives don’t have a chance.

Now, if you RAIDed four of them together somehow, maybe then it’d be competitive… but that wouldn’t fit in a card. Maybe someone will come up with some sort of double-decker device that raids four together into one “double” P2 card (a single product that takes up both slots)… then you’d have 32gb, probably enough speed, and probably a price that’s half of what an 8gb solid-state card costs.

Now that would be interesting…

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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available at https://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook/ and at Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/54u4a)

[Blub06]

But we can dream a dream…..

Chris

[Kyle S]

Since Apple helped build the factory, I am sure this has a bearing on the price Apple is paying. I am not sure anyone else would get that price from Samsung. Also, since Apple helped pay for the factory I think the output was intended for their use from the start.

[Toke]

But new CF-cards will have 100Mb write speed, so what I’m really waiting for is the first P2 adapter for cf-card.
Cf maybe not so robust than genuine p2, but surely robust enough for me.

[Barry Green]

Oh, I totally agree. I’d love to see a PCMCIA adapter card with a slot for high-speed CF memory, that you could swap out CF cards in. The expense would be in the first card (with whatever proprietary hardware it might need to interface with the P2 system in the camera). Then you’d have the ability to just plug in off-the-shelf CF (or even SD) cards; like the Sandisk Extreme III, which technically should be able to support the data rate right now. $500 for 4gb. I think that would be a great little product, if someone would develop it.

—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available at https://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook/ and at Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/54u4a)

[Video Opp]

In the end, I think that the price of the cards will have a direct effect on how many of these cameras are sold. Perhaps the ENG market will pay these prices but if Panasonic wants to capture a big marketshare with this revelutionary concept, which I believe that it could, it needs to drop the price of these 8M cards to something more like $300. Instead of thinking in terms of big profits on the cards for a few clients and think more in terms of moderate profits on cameras and cards for many clients.

JMHO

[Toke]

[Video Opp] “I think that the price of the cards will have a direct effect on how many of these cameras are sold.”

Absolutely right. When sony brings similar camera than hvx200 with recording to 50GB optical disk, which are sold about $50 each and are used both acquisition and archiving simultaneosly and are used in editing practically as easy as p2, then panny really has to decide whether to consentrate to niche market or to go to mainstream.