8G P2 Cards Price drop
 

$1400 at panasonic.com. Got my camera today, good thing thety had no cards in stock.

I can't believe it!! Talk about being hood-winked. I'm very glad to see the price become more reasonable, but holy cow... how unfair to the initial customers with such an inflated original price - only to drop it a few weeks later. Thanks for the bad P.R. move, Panny.

First people complain about the high prices of P2, now it's the low prices of P2, c'mon now.

My point is, if Panasonic dropped the price of the cards in less than one month of the initial release then they shouldn't have sold them for such an inflated price originally.

Normally what I've seen with any new equipment is the price doesn't start to fall until 6 months or even a year after the product has been on the shelves. How many people are out there that literally JUST purchased their cards only to be smacked by this price drop days later. See my point?

Panasonic makes incredible hardware, of which I'm a happy owner, but their marketing strategy makes me ill.

Ouch. Bye bye $1200. It was nice knowing you. I wish I could have used you for something else, but that's now history. Unless I return my HVX200+(2) 8GB cards to BHphoto that's on it's way today. :)

Heh.

I guess I'll go ahead and get 2 8GB cards instead of the 2 4GB ones then... I kinda figured this would happen anyway. Seeing how I could import 8GB cards from Japan for less than $1700. Panny should have been on top of things a bit better and adjusted the price with the release of the HVX. They announced the $2195 MSRP for 8GB cards over a year ago! They dropped the price on 4GB cards a while back, you'd think they'd adjust the 8's... Most good dealers will honor price drops on merchandise if it happens within a week or two of purchase, I know if I had bought a couple 8GB cards last week for $2K, I'd be yelling at my dealer and Panny a little bit.

If not a 'rebate' on already purchased cards, than at least a deep discount for new cards bought within the next X months. "Show proof of purchase on the high priced cards, and get an equal number of DISCOUNTED LOW priced cards" That way, sort of like income averaging or stocks, you can still get value for your money, they can still sell cards, and everyone moves forward happy.

It's not the price change, but the timing.

If you got your camera yesterday, and the priced dropped today, who wouldn't be concerned.

Especially given it's just been a month since shipping commenced.

Some people lost quite a bit of money because of an unusually timed, and substantial price change, don't you think?

I know we are honoring the new price on all the pre-orders, I'm sure other dealers will do the same.

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

That's what I would do. Return it. Then reorder at the cheaper price.

I'm going to keep the camera and taking this offline.

Sick 'em, Steve.

BTW - is that a Mackie board on the top of your rack in the studio photos? You've got a nice rack! Wait, that doesn't sound right....

(big laughs)

Good to see price drop. ;-)

But I still think the price is too high.

deleted message

Steev Dinkins, I know how you feel
 

I have to admit that I laughed reading yout post about loosing 1200 dollars. This reminds me about Apple doing something similar to the IMAC, releasing an Intel version about 1 to 2 months after their last IBM chipped MAC. I almost bought one and glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t have been able to sleep for several nights thinking about it.
I earnestly hope you will recover from this experience. I am starting to worry myself because I plan on getting the HVX200 by next month but I fear that they will do the same thing again.
I have to agree with Richard Alvarez, they need to do something to makeup for what they did unlike Apple because this incident may prevent people from buying more than one card. I can imagine all of the hate mail they are getting right now because of this.

Jan said on the Cow that anyone with 8gb cards should contact their reseller for price protection. You shouldn't have a problem.

Prices drop . . .
 

Hey guys, this is high technology stuff. Prices drop all the time and they are rarely timed to my personal buying plans. The P2 is basically just memory chips and that's a big market with lots of price drivers (mostly down). How many of us have bought a computer only to find that a small time later something better was available for the same money or the same thing was discounted as the new thing is getting ready to be released.

We should just be glad that the trend is in the downward direction.

My Panasonic rep has confirmed that credits will be issued to our dealer account for 8 gig cards already sold.

Frankly, i'm a bit surprised that that Panasonic is offering this credit for the price drop.

The only other time that price protection has been extended to us was for un-sold inventory purchased with-in 30 days of a price drop.

Most of the time, there is no price protection at all.

I can't agree more.

In computer industry, every 18 months for the same amount money you can buy double performance.

It's because they flubbed up and forgot to adjust 8GB P2 pricing when they released the camera and adjusted the 4GB pricing. Two weeks ago, we could buy the 8GB cards here in the USA (if you could find them) for about $2150... Or we could import them from Japan and pay a fair mark-up, import taxes, shipping, etc.. all for less than $1700.

It also goes along with the camera being new and Panasonic trying to keep their customers happy. And most reputable dealers, who stand behind the products they sell, will offer some form of price protection. I buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of computer components each year. I won't buy from any distributor/dealer that won't offer me at least a 2 week price guaranty. The last thing I need is for me to buy a new LCD monitor for a client, only to have it sit in my shop for 10 days before the client finally picks it up or comes back from vacation or whatever and in the meantime, the price drops by 15% and then the client doesn't want it anymore.

Even B&M stores like BestBuy, Circuit City, etc.. usually offer comparable price guaranties. My local BB stores will beat any competitors' price on an item by 10% at the time of purchase and up to 10 days after purchase.

Another price drop
 

Not that it matters too much since nobody has any yet, but B&H just dropped the price of the 8gb cards by $50. Click on the "email me a better price" link and it's $1349.95

Yeah, I have one on order there for that price. I have the HVX200 taken care of, I just need a P2 card to go with it. I can find the 4GB cards, but I'd rather get two 8GB cards... Nowhere to be found. Everyone keeps saying they should have them soon, but that's the best answer I'm getting. I do have a source that can import me one from Japan and I can probably have it within 3 days, but after shipping and import taxes, etc.. I'm looking at a bit over $1700. So I'm going to just wait it out a few more days and see what happens... I don't really want to buy any 4GB cards, but I can pick those up pretty easy.

FWIW, Spec-Comm has an even lower price on 8GB cards than B&H, but their waitlist for them is pretty long.

I'm looking at a bit over $1700.



Probably better to wait . . .

Woo hoo!! Just got my $1295 credit back for the price drop from BH. :D :D :D

I'll give you another $1295 if you send me one of your 8GB cards. :)

I think Panny is holding out on us so we have to buy the remaining 4GB cards in dealer inventories. There's no reason 8GB cards are this scarce. Spec-Comm has 4GB cards by the ton and I may just have to do that. Although they quoted me less than $1300 for an 8GB card, but I have to get on their extra long list and wait...

Well, there's one potential reason they're scarce -- the BBC is using HVX's with P2 cards for all their ENG coverage of the Turin Olympics. I wouldn't be surprised if they sent a healthy amount of 8gb cards over to Italy to facilitate that effort.

Hi Barry,

Do you know how many HVX200 BBC are using?

TIA

Regards
Leigh

No, I sure don't. All I know is that I was told the BBC were using them, and when I asked people over there about it I was sent this image of a newspaper article talking about it:
http://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/bbc-winter.jpg

Also there have been reports from people in Italy saying that they've seen BBC crews using them at the games.

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the information.

Regards
Leigh

BBC? Must be the PAL model, then! Can you confirm this? It seems doubtfull the BBC would shoot with the NTSC model, since UK's broadcast standard is Pal...

EDIT- In the article, they talk about dvcpro 50 cameras. Maybe its not the HVX but the sdx 800?

Your last sentence may be correct, but if so it's not because they are using HVX200s for their ENG - AFAIK they are using 2/3" P2 cameras with DVCPRO 50. As the newspaper article makes clear, they wish to move to "tapeless" production, and the Winter Olympics provide the opportunity to trial P2 (in SD) as part of this process. Am I correct in thinking the article comes from "Broadcast" magazine?