Lots of noise is flying around about the Panasonic HVX200 “true HD” unit… from the ‘reasonable’ price ($6k) to its need for pricey P2 cards ($2k for 8min at full HD). And whereas lots of ppl are ecstatic at the thought of true 100Mbit/sec HD in a DVX100A form-factor, the thought of having to cough-up $2k for each 8min-capacity P2 card is generating a bit of ire. “Why can’t we just connect a harddrive to the unit” ppl are asking.
Actually, the technical reason for the P2 card in the HVX200 is that of bandwidth… b/c there ain’t a drive in existence which could handle ‘true HD’ (ie, 100Mbit/sec, vs. the 25Mbit/sec of HDV) on an ongoing basis… & certainly not via firewire. The way the Kinetta solves this, is via multiple drives striped in raid-3. So regardless if the costly P2 is Panny’s ‘stealth markup’ for the HVX200, it also solves the issue of how to handle 4x the bandwidth DV/HDV/firewire can do.
The more interesting question is that of optics & imager of the HVX200… Who really cares if a P2 can record 4x more data than an XL2 (or DVX100A), if the resulting image just looks like an upsampled DVX100A. Considering Panny’s track-record of not really matching the viewfinder & lens well in the DVX100A (ie, don’t even try to get critical focus w/ that v/f; you need an on-set production monitor)… i’m expecting the HVX200 lens to drastically outperform its v/f.
What i’m hoping the HVX200 does well is DV50/24p. At 4:2:2 colorspace, that P2 card should hold 40min+, & [should] outperform Sony’s Z1… if not the SDX-900.
But don’t count-out a good v/f & solid manual lens… repeatable rack-focus is a pearl of great price, creative-shooting wise. Ie, that JVC camera (even using 25Mbit HDV) could beat them all…