Two more national broadcasters in Spain, the Sogecable-owned Canal 4 and CNN+, have decided to standardise on Panasonic’s tapeless P2HD platform as their acquisition format. This brings the total of broadcasters choosing P2 in Spain up to an impressive 15, and Panasonic now claims 80% of European broadcasters making the transition to tapeless are choosing P2, writes Fergal Ringrose.
“Sogecable has been a supporter of P2 since early 2004, and gradually all the companies within the group have been changing their workflows over to full IT,” said Toni Feliu, who heads up Panasonic broadcast sales in Spain. “The Panasonic P2 format fits perfectly within their organisation, and its ability to switch between SD and HD prepares them perfectly for production well into the future.”
Throughout Europe, fully 80% of the broadcasters that have made the switch to tapeless production methods have chosen P2 and P2HD as their acquisition format.
“Broadcasters find IT workflows simpler to use and much more cost-effective, so the influence on other areas of production is proving to be hard to resist,” said Marc Irwin, European marketing manager for Panasonic. “Sports, reality shows, daytime, promos, and even drama are taking seriously the simplicity of the full IT production P2 offers, and they’re all discovering the benefits of metadata, faster transfer speeds, and simple editing in the field.”
With the release of the 16GB P2 at NAB2007 and the imminent launch of new 32GB P2 cards, now an even greater range of productions can take advantage of the flexibility that the tapeless P2 platform provides. With four 16-GB P2 cards in the AG-HPX500, users can now shoot in 100Mbps HD for 64 minutes without needing to download.
