Panasonic has begun shipping its AG-HMX100, a low cost HD/SD digital A/V mixer with a suggest list price of $5,800 that the vendor is billing as the first affordable live switcher for use in 3D production.
The compact HMX100, which is designed for SD, HD and 3D productions, combines video switching and audio mixing features into a single unit that weighs less than 20 pounds. It includes a built-in MultiViewer display function and has a variety of interfaces-including four HD/SD-HDI inputs/outputs, two HDMI inputs and two analog composite inputs-so it can be connected to virtually any camcorder or video source.
It also offers a number of other inputs for video and audio and offers the ability to mix embedded audio from HD/SD-SDI camcorders and other sources. The built-in MultiViewer output that allows user to display video sources, audio levels and a waveform monitor in multiple windows on a single high-resolution monitor.
While the product is 3D capable, Panasonic is targeting the product to the school, hotel, government, corporate, cable, live events and wedding markets and it is likely to be mainly used for 2D standard definition or high definition video.
