Emery
Forum Replies Created
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During Jans presentation she had a diagram showing the construction of the P2 cards. As we all know there are 4 2GB cards in there. As she herself and others have discussed on this board before, one of the main differeces when it comes to manufacturing costs for the SD cards used to make P2 is they are error free. She made the example of buying a 60 gig hard drive but only have 57 gigs available when you install it. This is due to the drive having errors in certain sectors of the disk that will never be usable. Due to the already limited space on the P2’s, Panasonic has made sure all SD cards that go into the P2 are error free. Take this, add the other disk elements used to construct the card, add in the R&D and marketing… put it in the oven and bake at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes and out pops $2000 P2.
And in response to Nick…
Im in love with technology. I love to talk about it, I love anticipating whats around the corner. I dont consider my time here and other forums I frequent a waste of time. Its these boards that have contributed a large percentage of my knowledge. The cow is not just a place to come when you have a problem, its also a place to share and discuss experiences and opinions. And you are correct, I wouldnt use a PD-150 for a project. Im a pixel snob, what can I say? However, that doesnt mean Im turning down jobs because i cant use the camera of my choice. The majority of my jobs/clients wouldnt consider anything but HD or 35mm. Occasionally Ill do an SD job shot on the SDX-900 or Digibeta.
Some of us feel the need to raise awareness of what is a great product with a seemingly slightly unjustified media price. If all of us just accepted whatever manufacturers shoved down our throats and never questioned or judged their actions, then you probably wouldnt even have a PD-150. It is our voice, our response, out outcries that shapes the products of tomorrow. Jan herself frequents these boards and our feedback to her has a direct effect on the next camera down the road. So you can continue to hapily shoot your projects with the equipment available on the market and Ill do the same, however Ill also make sure the companies that are shaping my future have my interests in mind.
It is not a coincidence that the large percentage of users on this board feel the P2 is expensive or overpriced. I think Panasonics price is somewhat justified but I feel they should have swallowed profit margins on P2 until costs come down. It puts their users in a bad spot.
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Ah ok, I slightly misunderstood Ron.
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Chris….
“Broadcast quality gear is expensive for a reason: It’s reliable, and durable.”
This is not the bottom line. There are many reasons its so expensive, one of which is becuase we pay for it.
Did you read my previous post? Blackmagic is a perfect example… before blackmagic capture HD capture boards were $10,000 and then blackmagic comes along and sells an HD board for $2500 thats more capable than the $10,000 one.
The point is that just becuase something is “pro” doesnt mean it should cost an arm and a leg. It should be priced fairly.
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I got to play with the H1 today at res fest… its a solid camera. The design is really superb although its quite heavy. I asked the Canon rep about the progressive thing and he said there is a “cineframe” mode that has the same end result as progressive but since its not really progressive they cant use 24p in any of the literature. However, he admitted that he had no idea how it was done and that Canon has not yet reveled to them how they were achieving the progressive frames. I didnt buy the shtick, the CCD’s are interlaced… I dont know how you can end up with true progressive from that.
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I think we get what you are saying Ron. However, does that mean that everything a company puts out is fairly/appropriately priced? I had the opportunity to speak to Jan today at ResFest in New York and she went over why the P2 cards cost so much. While she definitely shed some new light on the situation, I still feel the P2 cards are overpriced. You argue that its silly to argue about a technology thats not yet shipping for a camera that doesnt exist… Well let me tell you the camera very much exists, I held it in my hands not only a few hours ago. By posting these links to all the other available solid state media on the market, we can begin to derive an industry standard. When the dust settles, P2 is over priced. The firestore is definitely overpriced.
I remember when we had similar conversations about capture cards… then Blackmagic comes along and screws every other competitor by offering a price that everyone would argued was too low to make a profit prior to its actual release.
The bottom line is that there are comparable technologies out there on the market today that would significantly undercut Panasonic’s P2 price if they were engineered for such a device.
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What I dont understand is why Canon didnt go for broke on this one. They dont have any higher end gear to protect… Do they not know what we want? I know there are other factors at play which we, the average consumer, dont know about but im still dumbfounded by A- lack of progressive CCD’s and B- the choice of only HDV and DV recording in camera. I understand HDV is natively supported by a wide range of software but its such an awful, horrible, retched codec. Grass Valleys new cam looks brilliant, but they have high-end gear to protect so they dont offer 24p. It drives me nuts!! Its not hard to list out the specs of a camera that would blow away all the competition. People would argue that the features I list are too expensive, yet they show up in all these new “affordable” HD cameras… just not on the same one. Some of these features like adding SDI out for the HVX would make it more expensive, but others are just “choices,” bad choices that wouldnt greatly effect the manufacturing costs.
I argued in the past about lack of interchangeable lenses on the HVX…. this is what most people want. Yet because of course Panasonic did not go with interchangeable lenses, there were a million reasons given about why its not the best way to go and how much is would add to the cost of the camera. Well look, Canon did it, JVC did it.
Its simple really, the Canon would really be stellar if it was real 24p, and offered direct to disk recording in a format other than HDV (jpeg 200 would be great as suggested.) If they got rid of the tape mechanism all together, I wonder how much those two features would have cost to add to the camera if they were part of the plan from the beginning. Id bet very little.
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Some very “interesting” choices which dont make much sense to me. HD-SDI out, time code in and out, along with the interchangeable lenses looks fantastic. However, Im not going to always be shooting tethered to 20k worth of capture gear. If instead of HDV they went with something like grass valley is offering (direct to disk jpeg2000) and had a real 24p, this camera would be incredible.
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I think I read $20,000 somwhere… dont quote me on that.
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There is no mention of real 24p in any of the docs. They say 24 quite often, but never with a “p” next to it. Jan is correct, It does use 1080i HDV.
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Wow…
Its always that ONE THING missing…. we want 24p. and 1080 at that. Even if this is aimed at the ENG market, doesnt it make sense to add 24p to open it up to the largest market possible? Im not an engineer and do not know how much more difficult it is to add 1080 24p but it seems to me that if they can make that whole camera it wouldnt be too hard for them to add 24p!!!!! Anyway, very interesting and definitely something for me to keep an eye on.