Sony Snapshots - NAB 2008 Day 0

PMW-EX3 with 2/3” cine lens, Sony HDD recorder

Sony’s Juan Martinez gave me a night-before-the-show tour of the Sony booth (really a miniature city; “booth” doesn’t do it justice), and here are some of the highlights from a camera operator’s perspective.

More New Panasonic Cameras - HMC 150

Panasonic also used the press conference to introduce us to the AG-HMC150 handheld.

This unit records to familiar SD and SDHC cards up to 32GB.  In HE mode, that’s 12 hours of 1440x1080 HD content on one 32GB card!

Full on press release goodness after the jump.

NAB Exhibits Start Tomorrow

Between meetings, booth appointments with vendors, and the crowds, I expect to update NAB news as available.

The conferences for Sony and Panasonic were interesting, but not very exciting.  I’m not talking about the new product introductions like the Sony EX3 or the Varicam 3700, I’m talking about listening to the marketing speak.  Here are some points gleaned from each conference.  Do with this data what you will.  Likely nothing…

Panasonic:
80,000+ P2 units worldwide
Fox has taken to P2 in a big way, and moving Fox News to P2HD worlwide
P2HD is the official recording format for the Beijing Olympics
P2 will double in Capacity every year
Majority of P2 repairs fixed within 24 hours.  That’s impressive actually.
Panasonic Broadcast has shown 6 consecutive years of revenue growth.
Panasonic is going “Green” with a plan to reduce CO2 emmissions by 300,000 tons by 2010

Sony:
Survivor will adopt Sony XDCAM HD for next year
Academy Awards, Indie Racing, SuperBowl and more shot on Sony HD
Ellen Degenerous moving to Sony HD
Sony is working to develope a recycling program for electronic equipment as their “Green” move.

Panasonic Intros 2 New P2HD Varicams: 2700 & 3700

Varicam 3700
• 1920x1080 recording
• 2/3” 2.2 megapixel 3-CCD imagers
• Expected Fall 2008 targeting Feature Films, Episodic TV and more

Varicam 2700
• 1280x720
• 2/3 1 megapixel Imager
Available Fall 2008 targeting Sports, Documentaries,Indie Films, more

Press Info after the jump.

Sony Announces the EX3

Sony announces a new sister to the EX1, the new EX3 with interchangeable lenses.  You know you’re in a room with tech guys when Miss Universe 2008 walks out on stage to intro the EX3 and the crowd is taking more pictures of the camera, than Miss Universe.

Of course Sony didn’t hand out press information, instead pushing attendees to the web.  Honestly, that feels a little lame for a press conference.  But adding insult to injury, the link for the EX3 information goes nowhere.  Nice job PR folks.  Here’s the link to all of the NAB Sony news, perhaps they’ll update their broken links soon: Sony NAB Press Info

Alec Shapiro SVP of Sony’s Business and Professional division did share some interesting facts with us:

Sony’s NAB booth is an incredible 26,000 square feet - the largest o at NAB
Their HD linup goes from $1,800 to over $200,000
Sony has sold over 31,000 units of XDCAM worldwide
Sony will display a prototype of a WiFi workflow at their booth.
There’s a new 60GB External Storage Unit with G Sensor and compatible with SxS Pro
Clip Browser software will be updated to 2.0
New BVM-L420 - 42” LCD Display
New Luma display models
OLED Camera Viewfinder

Panasonic Intros AG-HPX 170

The press conference for Panasonic went slightly long, but it was full of interesting product introductions.  First up:

AG-HPX170 P2 HD Handheld
1080i HD & SD
Widest zoom lens in it’s class
4.2 lbs
3 1/3 16:9 CCD
14-Bit A/D Conversion 19 Bit Processing
28mm 13x Leica Zoom lens
Time/date state makes this good for legal etc.
with 2 P2 slots, current 32GB cards can give you 64 continuous minutes.  When the 64GB cards hit the market, double that.

Available in the Fall with 5 year warranty.

Press release after the jump

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