So, this is gonna be “pick on Panasonic” week. My last entry was critical of some old world thinking going on in either Japan, New Jersey, or both places. We’ll turn the page now and talk about a new product that rocks the house. Well, it rocks the house except for its name: The Panasonic AG-HMR-10. Puh-leeze.
This is a remote recorder that can be linked to a small camera (Red Bull Can-Sized) via a long (up to 25 feet) cable. It will record in 720p, 1080p, and all kinds of variations. It is an AVCHD format (meaning AVC/H.264) and as such, is a far more modern codec than the previous compressed versions of HD in the 4:2:0 colorspace. The images are awesome. It records onto a class 6 HDSC memory card, so it’s literally plug-and-play. Beauty.
This is a wonderful recording device for all kinds of interesting situations. In our case, we could mount it in a helicopter cockpit, on the tiller of a hook and ladder fire engine (looking down the ladder), on the windscreen of a (fast) motorcycle, and or, on a custom-designed, aerodynamic solar-powered racing car.
This is forward thinking for Panasonic. The next thing I’ll hear is that the same engineering team came up with this and the unbelievably lame mobile edit box, aptly named the Mobile AVC-Intra/DVCPRO HD/50/25 P2 Recorder AJ-HPM200.