Press Release: Panasonic Expands P2HD Partners

[Chris Hurd]

Panasonic and Various Broadcasting Equipment Manufacturers Collaborate on P2 HD Compatibility

Tokyo, Japan (November 20, 2007) -- Panasonic, the leading brand for which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., is known, today announced that leading broadcast equipment manufacturers including FUJIFILM Corporation, FOR-A Company, Ltd., Thomson Grass Valley and Omneon, Inc. have agreed to collaborate with Panasonic in the development of peripherals and systems compatible with Panasonic P2 HD Series professional broadcast video products. The specific areas of collaboration are described as follows:

P2-compatible Memory Cards: FUJIFILM Corporation

FUJIFILM, a major media supplier for broadcasting industry, is expected to introduce a series of P2-compatible solid-state memory cards for broadcasting purposes to USA, and European market, from spring, 2008.

* For more information about FUJIFILM, visit their website at: http://fujifilm.com/

P2HD-compatible Media Management System: FOR-A Company, Ltd.

FOR-A's proprietary media management system conforms to AVC-Intra codec, enabling the system to ingest and manage contents of P2 card as meta data. Expected for release in 2008, it can also be linked with an AVC-Intra-compatible non-linear editing system via network, to provide a shared storage for media materials, or function as an archive system.

* For more information about FOR-A's media management system, visit their website at: http://www.for-a.co.jp/

P2HD-compatible video server: Thomson Corp. and Omneon, Inc.

Thomson's Grass Valley video servers will be supporting DVCPRO HD and AVC-Intra. Combined with Thomson's already completed AVC-Intra support in their EDUIS line of non-linear editors, Grass Valley will offer in the future a complete end-to-end workflow based on P2 from direct editing on P2 cards, to playout.

Omneon, Inc. announced that the new 5600-series MediaPort modules for the Omneon Spectrum(TM) media server and the Omneon MediaDeck(TM) integrated server will provide realtime encoding and decoding of HD material using the AVC-Intra codec. Omneon is demonstrating direct recording and playback of AVC-Intra video through the MIP-5601 of a Spectrum(TM) server at InterBEE 2007. The complete MIP-5600 line will be available in mid-2008.

Now that these new partners have joined us, the P2 alliance partnership will shift into a new stage. Having FUJIFILM as a partner enables more users to experience the P2HD. In addition to providing services with existing software, we hope to share the plenty of merits of the P2 derived from solid-state memory recording system with varieties of customers.

Broadcasting stations throughout the world are rapidly shifting into HD and tapeless production environment, and the demand for replacing the conventional tape-based system is increasing. In the meantime, the P2 series were introduced while leading the industry as fully-featured solid-state memory video recording system. Until today, over 60,000 P2/P2HD units have been shipped worldwide. The number of broadcasting stations employing the P2/P2HD Series is also increasing, as it has grown to 610 worldwide. (As of the end of August, 2007.)

In the U.S., P2 HD products are marketed by Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co., Secaucus, NJ.

Visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast to learn more.

[Chris Hurd]

Re: Fuji's P2 cards, see Barry Green's thread for more discussion located at:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=108348