Panasonic Scores Acquisition BreakThrough

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.uemedia.com/CPC/article_6767.shtml

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

It's about freakin' time

Dr. Mordrid

[paulw]

Wonder how long before it filters down to consumer level..

[Hulk]

I hope they get this moving. I mean with the bandwidth required for DV storage, fast memory, by today's standards isn't even needed. Old PC100 technology would do the trick easily. I wonder how much resistance is being offered by the tape manufacturers...

Mark

[SpiralDragon]

way way way about time...... one step closer...

[wkulecz]

Seems pretty blu-sky to me. TLA with unlimited budgets can afford this stuff, probably major networks & studios, but everyone else, have you priced Flash memory lately? Remember consumer DV is 13GB/hr.

As far as I know all the flash makers are runnig full capacity and selling all they can make so there is almost no downward presure on price.

Article seems pretty vague, where is all this solid state memory going to come from?

--wally.

[Flying dutchman]

I wonder why nobody designs MPEG-2 camcorders around 2.5" notebook hard drives. They are small, robust and have enormous capacities (40-60 GB!) in comparison to DVD's. Even HDTV resolution would be no problem with this storage space.

[fberger]

Consumer level? I am not sure about that one. See, I think a lot of people enjoy poping out a full tape from their camcorder and putting a new one in to start filming right away again.
Tape provides two functions in one media: recording and archiving. Whereas tapeless cameras are good for people that intend to transfer to something else anyways to archive. It is usefull for recording only.
I think the novelty effect of DVD video editing for the masses will pass. Will remain only a small percentage of those. For most people, they'll want to take whatever comes out of the camera right away and be able to play it back a thousand times without worrying about transfer to PC and DVD editing.

Fred

[Hulk]

Wally,

Your blu-sky comment reminded me of something my father says about "pie in the sky" plans. He calls them "high altitude pastry."

-Mark

[Flying dutchman]

@fberger:

OK, but where would they put a mini-DV tape in, if not in the camera itself?


A 60 gb hard disk camera with mpeg-2 encoder would of course still offer the possibility to do analog transfers (e.g. to VHS, YUK!) but also have the great advantage of being able to store some 20 hours of dvd-quality video. One could go on a looooong holiday without having to buy a single tape. In fact many people will never get the disk full...

The camera itself could be very small and relatively cheap because everything tape-related (motor, capstan, heads drum, door mechanism etc) can be left out and replaced by a cheap notebook hard disk.

Equip the camera with a firewire port and a sensible cutting/editing firmware. The customer has the option to buy an external Firewire DVD writer (which is also a standard PC item) to backup his movies to DVD without even having to use a PC... How much easier can life get?

[the3rdman]

hard disc recordable digi beta cam has been out for years now
solid state systems are way off base because of media pricing
nice idea but am I missing a point here

[Hulk]

I like Flying Dutchman's idea but with a twist. How about the ability to record in multiple formats, MPEG-2, DV, MJPEG (4:4:4). I would like to edit in a high quality MJPEG format. The firewire port could provide access to the camera drive for faster than real time transfers.

The drives could even be swappable in case you needed more than 60GB for one recording situation.