The "way" to go, will be in about 30 days from now, not 10 years. Heh heh.

Currently the only high demand for HD production is in niches that need to future proof their content (Broadcast/Cable series, Feature Movie, Feature Documentary). In that group I see only Feature Documentary benefiting by HDV over tapeless DVCProHD due to long records and possible remote locations. The others all allow time to "offload" and/or have short record times and would benefit by DVCProHD (and 4:2:2 for compositing work!). It's also possible that certain "Reality TV" formats need the long record times of HDV.


Craig - for right now I kind of agree with you, it seems the P2 card is an intermediate solution. (as do HDV & DVCProHD too)

But it haralds in Direct to Digitized/un(or less)coompressed
I think that this will spill into larger sections of Broadcast/Cable series, Feature Movie, Feature Documentary
as P2 cards (or Firestore solutions) become larger and cheaper.
If for nothing else but simply the fact that you have everything digitized and ready to work with

For right now I plan on recording directly into my laptop
and getting two P2 cards, always downloading one while I shooting on the other. Not ideal, but workable and seamless
Until the Firestore gets here in 3 months and then I will have longer range of constant recording
(Firstore/P2 cards while it downloads/Firestore)
but, again I think you are right all this is pointing somewhere else
(maybe it always will)
I should get up on the NYC FCP users group

From SD cards. There are something like 700 companies making products that use SD cards. Digital cameras and now video cameras and all sorts of things use SD cards. The mass market adoption drives down the prices of SD cards. The P2 card literally uses four SD cards in its construction. As SD card prices fall, P2 card prices fall.

Yes, and Panasonic makes thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of video cameras a year, does that mean that the Varicams will soon be as cheap as a Palmcorder? No. The Varicam is a high end product and Panasonic only produces a handfull a year. Or Intel, they make millions of chips a year, I can get a Celeron for $80, but if I want the lattest top of the line juiced up CPU Ill have to pay over 10 times that.

So great demand at the lower and mid level of a product dont translate automaticaly to lower prices in the high end.

My theory is that prices WILL come down, but I dont see them coming down so much to make it an option for a lot of us, nor I see them coming down as soon as many are willing to bet on.

Oh the price for P2 will come down, it's just a question of when.

I see these same discussions with every new technology that comes out such as DVD. Now look at DVD.

I realize P2 is not a consumer format, but please remember that SD memory is.
The demand for larger memory formats are there and have been from the start.

Oh the price for P2 will come down, it's just a question of when.

Agreed. It's Panasonic's best interests that prices come down. It's in customer's best interests that prices come down. The cheaper P2, the more card Panny sells, the more cameras Panny sells, the more high capacity P2 cards are made.

Unless there is some fundamental tech reason and/or P2 cameras are made that people don't want, there appears to be little chance that P2 prices won't continually fall and fall at a decent clip.

Actually the demand for SD chips are already fairly high. At a seminar put on by Panasonic at the Cine Equipment Show in NYC, they said the real price issue is in the Quality Control. Only about 2% of the SD chips are of the quality needed for P2 use. As the Quality of the yields improve, the prices of the P2 will drop closer to that of SD cards.

http://news.com.com/Small+gadgets+to+spark+flash-memory+surge/2100-1041_3-5965603.html?tag=nefd.lede

Still....Im not sure about the high end part of the market going down to much.