NAB 2005 Part 2: One Affordable Panasonic Camcorder to Rule Them All

After Panasonic unveiled its AG-HVX200 camcorder at Apple's press conference Monday during NAB 2005, we were so enticed that we quickly fought our way through the NAB crowd to the Panasonic booth to get our hands on the AG-HVX200.

According to Panasonic, the AG-HVX200 promises to give prosumers affordable HD recording capabilties and has also caused a stir among NAB attendees. Panasonic officials were also more than happy to give us the juicy technical specifications

Technical Overview

Optically, the camcorder is top notch. It uses three 1/3 inch CCDs that record at 16:9 natively. The CCDs are 1.1 megapixels each. The lens is an 83mm Leica Dicomar with 13X optical zoom. The built in neutral density filter can be set to 1/64, 1/8 or off.

The camcorder records on P2 solid state cards, that can be popped into your laptop for immediate editing. The camera also comes with a mini DV tape slot.

An HD field monitor can be attached via the HD analog out port. Panasonic promises to release an SDI connection in the future.

The camcorder has Firewire and USB2 ports. Some companies offer direct to hard-drive recording, via firewire connection. I asked whether the HD signal could be transferred to these drives. Panasonic officials said, "Only standard definition can be transferred via the firewire port, because of bandwidth limitations.

Panasonic says its AG-HVX200 will be available in fall for $5,995.