NAB in Las Vegas saw the unveiling of Panasonic’s HPX-170 P2 solid-state camera. The 1080p camcorder has the widest zoom lens in its class, a 13x Leica Dicomar with 28mm wide-angle setting, and an SDI interface, all in a 1.2kg body. Full press release of the HPX-170 P2 after the jump.
newVideoPlayer("p2_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Since the YP-P2 is Samsung’s attempt to take on the iPod touch, we thought we’d show you a touching video—one that Jennifer and I shot in a crowded Starbucks today—depicting its (mostly) touch-friendly interface. [Samsung]
Panasonic is talking the talk and showing the results with its P2 HD cards at NAB, and also rolled out a solid-state HD camcorder to go with them, the HPX500. This mutha tops Panasonic's hugely successful HVX200 camcorder introduced a couple of years ago, the pro-level HD shooter that also uses those P2 flash-based memory cards. The difference is that the HBX500 has interchangeable lenses, letting you get all film-like with specialized lenses for unique looks. It uses four of those 16GB P2 cards instead of tape, giving you 64 minutes of DVCPro HD footage at a time.
The camcorder has three 2/3" progressive-scan CCDs, and can handle 32 different types of HD and standard-def formats, plus it can handle variable frame rates of every type. This is a $14,000 camcorder, but this kind of flexibility and quality is amazing for that price. Panny says we'll be seeing the HPX500 on the streets next month. – Charlie White
galleryPost('hpx500', 11, 'Panasonic HPX500 Camcorder');
Today at the Panasonic event at NAB, the company let it be known that by the end of the year it will be shipping 32GB cards for its HPX500. Yeah it is a $14,000 dollar camera you don’t care about, but the announcement of the 32-gig card is a great road map to where the solid state technology is headed.
The 32GB cards will sell for around $1800, causing the current 16GB cards to drop to $900, the 8GB will fall to $700, and the 4GB cards will hover around $600. When laptop manufacturers adopt flash memory for their internal hard drives, $1800 is going to seem like an insane price to have for these cards that will allow you to record two hours of DVCPro video.
Take the jump for the really confusing price structure map delivered as only Panasonic can do it.
