AJ-SPD850 DVCPRO P2 STUDIO RECORDER BRIDGES IT AND AV EDITING FOR NEXT-GENERATION NEWS AND PRODUCTION

LAS VEGAS, NV (April 18, 2004) – Here at NAB 2004, Panasonic showcases theAJ-SPD850, a DVCPRO P2 solid-state memory studio recorder that provides a high-performance bridge between the IT world of non-real time file transfers and the traditional world of real-time baseband video and audio recording and editing. The AJ-SPD850 is equipped with five P2 card slots to provide up to 80 minutes of recording in 25Mbps DVCPRO and 40 minutes in 50Mbps DVCPO50 on five 4GB P2 cards*. A unique advantage of the DVCPRO P2 series is that recording time increases as the capacity of available P2 cards increases. “The AJ-SPD850 is equipped for the demands of both AV and IT environments, with extensive editing features including a VTR-like front panel with Jog/Shuttle, plus IT connectivity via USB 2.0, and IEEE-1394,“ said Stuart English, Vice President, Marketing, Panasonic Broadcast. For direct connection to a nonlinear editor or video server, the AJ-SPD850 features USB 2.0 and Ethernet ports and offers IEEE-1394 and SDI with embedded audio as system options. The deck offers simple editing operation from its VTR-like panel complete with Jog/Shuttle dial, as well as Video Encoder adjustment control, a front-panel Graphic User Interface (GUI) and Play-list making and playback capabilities. When operating with P2 cards, the AJ-SPD850 offers super-fast shuttle search speeds up to 100 times normal in forward, reverse, fast forward and rewind, with full color images. The deck provides noiseless slow and fast playback at speeds from 1X in reverse to 2X in normal speed. A built-in 3.5” color LCD simplifies browsing and selection of clips, and reduces the requirement for an external field monitor. For economical video archiving and international “air courier” field-to-studio data transfer, the AJ-SPD850 offers optical disc back-up by means of an optional DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive. Each 4.7GB recordable DVD provides DVCPRO or DVCPRO50 native video archiving for about $2 per DVD-R disk. The P2 deck will support a SD Memory card slot for reading and writing play lists, including updating software modules. Offering outstanding audio performance, the AJ-SPD850 records full 48KHz/16-bit digital audio on all four channels in the DVCPRO50, DVCPRO and DV formats. Standard A/V outputs/inputs on the AJ-SPD850 include: analog component, composite and reference video, digital audio (AES/EBU Ch1 – Ch4), analog audio (XLR, Ch1 – Ch4), monitor out, and time code in/output. Options include video SDI and IEEE 1394. Remote control is accomplished via RS-422A, RS-232C and an Encoder remote. The 4RU size recorder mounts easily in a standard 19” rack. The AJ-SPD850 will be available in June at a Suggested List Price of $15,000. The DVCPRO P2 product family also includes the AJ-SPX800 Camputer™ camcorder, AJ-PCD10 card drive, and AJ-P2C004S 4GB and AJ-P2C002S 2GB capacity P2 cards*. For more information on the DVCPRO P2 Series, visit www.panasonic.com/p2. About Panasonic Broadcast Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast, professional video and presentation products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North America subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC), one of the world's leading developers and producers of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use. * P2 card capacity shown above reflects capacity of unformatted card. Useable capacity will be less.