Panasonic five-slot P2 drive available

Panasonic’s new five-slot P2 solid-state memory drive, the AJ-PCD20, is available. Panasonic improved it with the addition of an IEEE 1394b interface (in addition to USB 2.0) and with a lower list price of $1,980. The flexible internal/external drive eliminates the digitizing process and offers a more convenient file transfer workflow. It also gives users the flexibility of using either the USB 2.0 or the IEEE 1394b (S800) interface for high-speed file transfer of 25Mbps DVCPRO, 50Mbps DVCPRO50, or 100Mbps DVCPRO HD into nonlinear editing systems and servers. The AJ-PCD20 can mount five 8 GB P2 cards simultaneously (containing up to 160 minutes of recordings in DVCPRO, 80 minutes in DVCPRO50 and 40 minutes in DVCPRO HD) giving users instant access to all recorded content on each card. A user can view all cards content in sequence for continuous editing and a smoother workflow. Compatible with Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X, the AJ-PCD20 can be installed as an internal drive directly into a standard PC 5.25-inch bay drive enclosure or connected to a host computer through its high-speed USB2.0 or IEEE1394b interface for linkage to a local area network (LAN). As an external drive, the AJ-PCD20 easily connects with laptops (PC notebook or Mac PowerBook) for fast, in-the-field editing and playback features.