P2 for TV3 New Zealand

TVWorks Ltd (broadcasters of TV3 and C4) and Panasonic New Zealand Limited today announced TVWorks’ decision to adopt Panasonic’s new P2 Solid State recording format. This will initially involve the purchase of a number of AJ-SPX900 news cameras along with the AJ-SPD850 P2 deck and AJ-PCD10 P2 drives. The first order of equipment will be deployed in 3’s South Island News operation. John Allen, Director of Operations and Engineering for 3 said today, “The implementation of P2 heralds a major and exciting change in the way we acquire and process News material. The ability to directly mount the media and bypass the ingest process is a significant advantage. P2 does demand a bigger departure from traditional workflows than alternative technologies and that serves to expedite our change to an IT based infrastructure – but that’s a very positive move and one we wanted to make. The adoption of Panasonic’s P2 format will bring significant efficiency benefits and a faster turnaround of news stories in the field. Once we have the backbone of our new IT infrastructure in place we are looking at a total replacement programme that should see us migrate all our news and current affairs acquisition to P2 over the next few years.” Rick Haywood Manager of Panasonic Broadcast & Display Systems Group in New Zealand commented, “Needless to say we are delighted at 3’s decision to adopt P2. It is difficult when you are introducing such radical technology, to get people to think outside the square and P2 really requires that. We are at the point where digital still photography was five years ago. People could see what the benefits were they just had to get the other pieces in place to take advantage of it, and look where digital still cameras are at today. P2 is much the same, we are really in our worst case scenario now as we launch the format, but this is an investment beyond today, and the future for this new format is not limited by any TV technology that we are aware of today. P2 is far more than a “no moving parts” camera, it represents the final integration of the IT based digital newsroom with the IT based field camera, the possibilities are only just starting to be uncovered.” Panasonic’s DVCPRO P2 series products are fully compatible with DVCPRO, and provide a seamless migration path to DVCPRO HD. DVCPRO P2 offers non-linear acquisition and instant access to material, high-speed file transfer, laptop field editing without requirement for proxy videos, and compatibility with off-the-shelf data storage drives for low-cost archiving, while eliminating traditional digitizing and ingesting operations. The DVCPRO P2 system eliminates transports and mechanisms, resulting in a significant maintenance cost-saving because of the absence of any moving parts that can break down or wear out from repetitive use. Moreover, DVCPRO P2 products are resistant to environmental extremes including shock, vibration, cold, dust, moisture and humidity.