Related: NAB Show 2015 Complete Coverage
Panasonic announced major sales agreements with the NBCUniversal News Group, the Cox stations and Meredith at its opening press conference, where it also showed off new 4K and HD cameras and cloud-based news production systems.
The company said that NBCUniversal News Group was purchasing their AJ-PX5000 and AJ-PX270 cameras for contribution and that they were acquiring VariCam 35 cameras for longform production.
As part of a group-wide upgrade of its newsgathering cameras, the Cox Media Group has started acquiring the AJ-PX5000G 2/3 inch P2 HD shoulder-mount, the AJ-PX800 2/3 inch P2 HD shoulder-mount and the 1/3 inch AJ-PX270 P2 HD handheld.
Both NBCUniversal News Group and Cox are planning to standardize on AVC-LongG25 acquisition.
In addition, Panasonic reported that Meredith Corporation’s Broadcast Group recently purchased 30 Panasonic AJ-PX800 2/3” AVC-ULTRA Panasonic shoulder-mount camcorders for ENG operations at its Phoenix station, KTVK-TV.
New 4K cameras launched at NAB included the AG-DVX200 4K large-sensor, 4/3” handheld camcorder; the AK-UB300 4K multi-purpose camera and the AK-UC3000 4K-ready studio system.
The AG-DVX200, which records 4K/60p and has 12 stops of latitude, will be available in the fall of 2015 for a suggested price of under $5,000.
Also very notably, Panasonic announced the launch of its P2 Cast cloud-based news production system. It uses the network features of the company’s AJ-PX5000G, AJ-PX800 and AJ-PX270 cameras so that content uploaded to the cloud is immediately available for reviewing and editing on newsroom systems.
The system, which has been tested by a number of major broadcasters, is currently available in the U.S. and Europe as a free trial through September of 2015.
As previously reported, Panasonic is also expanding its strategic collaboration with LiveU with a free firmware upgrade for AVC-ULTRA camcorders. This allows camera operators to manage live uplinks while shooting video and acting as a one-person remote crew.
