Tech Talk

Panasonic is shipping a 16-gigabyte (GB) solid-state–memory card for its P2 camera format, doubling the storage capacity and recording time of previous cards and giving news crews more flexibility when shooting in the field. The AJ-P2C016RG 16GB P2 card, announced in February and touted at the NAB show in April, is priced at $900.

With the 16GB card, a news shooter with a high-end, five-slot AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD camcorder can record 80 minutes of either 1080-line interlace or 720-line progressive HD video using Panasonic's 100-megabit-per-second (Mbps) DVCPRO HD format, or 160 minutes of high-quality standard-definition video using the 50-Mbps DVCPRO 50 format.

Panasonic also confirmed that an $1,800 32GB P2 card will be available by year-end, effectively quadrupling storage capacity of its previous, 8GB version.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition, a collection of station groups interested in developing and implementing a mobile-TV system that works within the existing digital-TV spectrum, last week issued an “Open Letter to the Technology Industry” urging vendors to participate in the standardization of mobile-DTV technology.

The group—which counts Belo Corp., Fox Television Stations, Gannett Broadcasting, Gray Television, Ion Media Networks, the NBC and Telemundo Television Stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Tribune Broadcasting among its members—would like a single standard for mobile DTV to emerge, preventing the type of format war that has plagued other new technologies. Specifically, it encourages vendors to participate in the Advanced Television Systems Committee's (ATSC) formal standards process announced in April and launched last month. Formal replies to the ATSC's request for proposal are due July 6.

“The Coalition believes that one of the major threats to the successful and timely introduction and adoption of new mobile-video products and services,” the letter says, “is a marketplace 'format war' among incompatible approaches.”