PANASONIC ANNOUNCES ENHANCED FIVE-SLOT P2 SOLID-STATE MEMORY DRIVE
Flexibility of USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394b for High-Speed Transfers
LAS VEGAS, NV (April 23, 2006) -- Here at NAB 2006, Panasonic debuts the AJ-PCD20, a new five-slot P2 solid-state memory drive that enhances workflow productivity.

The P2 internal/external drive is designed for high-speed file transfer of 25Mbps DVCPRO, 50Mbps DVCPRO50, or 100Mbps DVCPRO HD into nonlinear editing systems and servers. With the AJ-PCD20, a user can mount five 8 GB P2 cards (containing up to 160 minutes of recordings in DVCPRO, 80 minutes in DVCPRO50 and 40 minutes in DVCPRO HD) at the same time and have access to the contents on all five cards for continuous editing of recorded clips in sequence. With the AJ-PCD20, digitizing is eliminated, so that material can be accessed almost instantaneously.

As an internal drive, the AJ-PCD20 installs in a standard PC type 5.25” bay drive enclosure, and through its high-speed USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394b (S800) interfaces connects to the host computer, and through that computer to a television station’s local area network (LAN). For in-the-field use, the AJ-PCD20 serves as a stand-alone external drive and teams with a notebook PC or Mac PowerBook for editing and playback. The drive offers Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X compatibility.

The AJ-PCD20 card drive will be available in July at a suggested list price of $1,980.

Panasonic’s DVCPRO P2 series products are fully compatible with DVCPRO, the industry’s standard for digital newsgathering, and provide a seamless migration path to DVCPRO HD. DVCPRO P2 offers nonlinear 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 P2 card is re-usable, allowing a station to substantially reduce its media budget. For more information, visit www.panasonic.com/p2.

About Panasonic Broadcast

Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast and professional video products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North America. The company is the North American headquarters of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) of Japan, and the hub of its U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, access the company’s web site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast.