Today, Panasonic introduced the new shoulder-mounted AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD camcorder. The camera comes with 5 hot-swappable P2 card slots. The camera records in the new AVC-Intra codec which has the same data rate as DVCPro HD but needs less memory. AVC-Intra supposedly doubles the storage capacity of the DVCPro HD. Panasonic says the new codec gives 10-bit 4:2:2 images at both 1920x1080 i/p and 1280x720p (480i and 576i are also options), they compare the image quality to the D-5 HD format. If you were wondering about the compatibility in NLE's for the Codec, Avid and Apple were on hand at the press briefing to promise their support for the codec. The camera is slated for a January release and is priced at $27,000.

This camera will directly compete with Sony's XDCAM which uses the mpeg-2 codec. At the press briefing, Panasonic made sure to stick it to its competitors, an actress playing a a dingy, bubbly, blond newscaster declared loudly, 'It's toodle-oo to MPEG-2!"