Panasonic plan to introduce 16GB SDHC this year

"Panasonic will continue to expand the memory capacity, and is planning to introduce 8GB and even 16GB SDHC Memory Cards in year 2007."

Source http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?itemId=104557

It's good news that 8GB card may be cheaper then :D


Btw, I was wondering about how Panasonic handle with the SD capacity limit of the camcorder.

SDR-S100/S300 -> max 2GB SD card only
SDR-S150/S200 -> max 2GB SD card, max 4GB SDHC card

Why ??? I hope Panasonic won't expect their customers to upgrade to the newer cams to be compatible with 8GB or 16GB or 32GB card.

If you want to use SDHC, you will have to buy a camcorder that supports that format. The older SD cams (or the miniDV with SD cards) do not support SDHC.

Thanks Guy. I understand your point.

For digital still cameras, some manufacturers issued new firmware to enable old camera to be compatible with SDHC. I don't know if this's possible with video cameras or not. I have little hope on this though.

But my main concern is why SDR-S150/S200 are limited to 4GB SDHC. I think they should be even designed to be compatible with 32GB SDHC. Will Panasonic give any solution for SDR-S150/S200 to work well with 8/16/32GB SDHC ?

8GB CF card price was just dropped !! Hope it'll happen with SDHC in this year also :D But my SDR-S100 can't use it anyway :(

Transcend 8GB CF 120x = $99.99 plus shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820208050

RiData 8GB CF 150x = $114.99 plus shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820183021

Sounds good to me, because all the 4GB cards will come down in price!

And personally, I don't think I'll be bothered about 16GB on the S150, it takes long enough to scroll through the thumbnails of 50mins of stop start video anyway. I'd rather stick with 4 or 8GB and swap the memory cards and also have less risk of loosing lots of data on one card.

Obviously if you record very long footage and leave the camera plugged into the mains, 16GB might be nice.

Sounds good to me, because all the 4GB cards will come down in price!

And personally, I don't think I'll be bothered about 16GB on the S150, it takes long enough to scroll through the thumbnails of 50mins of stop start video anyway. I'd rather stick with 4 or 8GB and swap the memory cards and also have less risk of loosing lots of data on one card.

Obviously if you record very long footage and leave the camera plugged into the mains, 16GB might be nice.

Yeah, 16G seems like a lot.. you'd never have a large enough battery to run it that long, even in XP mode.

I bought a bunch of TOPRAM SDHC cards, 4G (150X) and 8G ClassII and they work perfectly with this camera. 4 batteries and quite a few cards and I'm loaded for bear. I think I'd sooner have a bunch of 4 & 8's than a few 16G to be honest..

They just announced the product.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1188579231.html

Memory Capacity 16 GB
Speed Class Class 6
Data Transfer Rate Up to 20MB/s
estimated retail price of $319.99
will be globally released in November 2007