NAB: Panasonic Promises 'Everything We Make Will Be 4K by 2014'
Planned products include 4K broadcast cameras.
LAS VEGAS -- Keen not to appear a Johnny-come-lately to the Ultra-HD party -- despite having no shipping 4K production products -- Panasonic was talking up its 4K plans at the NAB Show.
Development will see almost its entire product line refreshed to the higher-resolution standard by NAB next year, Kunihko Miyagi, president of the company's imaging division, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“We are developing a 4K system -- a whole set of products -- to allow for affordable 4K production,” he said. “Everything we make in HD will be 4K.”
Planned products include shoulder-mounted broadcast cameras, production switchers and handheld camcorders, which will bow in 2014, he said.
Later this year, the first of the line will be released, a 31-inch professional LCD monitor, the BT 4L H310,with 4096 x 2160 resolution for 4K/2K monitoring in the field.
It is also in development of a 4K VariCam, a camera offering high-speed 4K recording to a large sensor compressed in Panasonic’s AVC-Ultra compression, a codec that already supports resolutions up to 4K.
Referring to existing 4K digital cameras like the Sony F65 and Red Epic, Miyagi said: “At the high end of acquisition, there are already many products on offer. There is a huge missing link in product needed to create 4K content besides that of cinema. The direction we are coming from is to rationalize the 4K workflow and make it as cost effective as possible.”
Also on the Panasonic NAB booth was a prototype 4K compact consumer camcorder and a 4K tablet, both of which were previously shown at CES in January.
