Panasonic offers up 32GB P2 memory card

It's been a short while since we've seen any news on the P2 HD front, but Panasonic is hoping to extract a few more hundies from those sold on the format by introducing a 32GB P2 card. The device, labeled AJ-P2C032RG, can be installed in sets of five into the AJ-HPX3000 and HPX2000 P2 HD camcorders for recording "up to 2.5 hours (over 3 hours in 24p) of footage in AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD and 5 hours (over 6.5 hours in 24p) in AVC-Intra 50 or DVCPRO 50." As you'd probably expect, this sucka won't run you cheap, as it's expected to demand a staggering $1,650 when it hits in November.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

[JDM Posted Sep 17th 2007 10:36PM]

Does Panasonic do anything to lock out alternate brand memory cards? For example, it basically looks like a PC Card memory card, and my understanding is that a notebook computer can read P2 cards as a drive.

I'm curious if they have taken any means to prevent a CF card + CF to PC Card adapter combination from working. A 16GB P2 card costs $900 at B&H, but a CF to PC Card adapter is like $5 and a 16GB card runs from $150 to $300, depending on brand and speed grade.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 18th 2007 11:28AM]

To JeffDM- speed is the issue. Whatever card you use needs to be able to catch a 100mbit data stream consistently. A very few CF cards can now do this, but they have some dependencies not likely to be supported by the camera. From what I've seen, much of the expense of the panasonics is in using multiple flash devices, and striping the data across them. Still not undoable from the perspective of a homebuilt hack, but it certainly raises the difficulty.

[JDM Posted Sep 18th 2007 6:55PM]

For what it's worth, the Sandisk "Extreme III" CF cards claim 20MB (capital B) read and write speeds, which should mean 160Mbps speed.

I'm not sure what special deed is required to be able to stripe across them, I thought the P2s generally used cards sequentially.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 19th 2007 3:37PM]

FS-100 FireStore for Panasonic AG-HVX200, *100GB* for $1,699.95 from B&H, no warranty-voiding hack required.