Why Panasonic Waited So Long for HD

by Robin Liss
Published on May 11, 2006 2:15 PM



May 11, 2006 - Today's announcement by Panasonic of the AVCHD format marks their first official move on a consumer high definition camcorder. JVC first entered the HD market almost three and a half years ago. Canon, Sony and Sharp joined JVC, officially supporting the JVC developed HDV spec in July 2003. Since that announcement, Sony has released two consumer HDV camcorders and Canon has introduced one. Panasonic, however, has sat alone with no clear official direction on their HD strategy. The wait is over. 

"We wanted something that is going to be forward compatible, something that is not going to be obsolete, something that will not terminate when the new Blu-ray players technology comes along. So we waited until that time. Our goal is to get the highest quality video out to consumers. It took us longer than others but we think it will be worth the wait," said Rudy Vitti, Marketing Manager for Panasonic camcorders.

There has been much speculation as to why the company did not support the HDV specification even though Sony, their partner in AVCHD, is one of the biggest supporters: "We think a disc will be more efficient and user friendly," said Burt Desmond, Vice President of the Optical Group at Panasonic.

Blu-Ray is the major variable in today's announcement by Sony and Panasonic. Both companies are aggressively marketing the new Blu-Ray technology as the next hard drive optical disc technology to replace DVD. They are fighting hard against HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba and Microsoft.

The Blu-ray support will also allow the disks to be played in Blu-ray players, although they are recorded on traditional DVD media. That ease of use compatibility is why Panasonic waited this long. "The codec allows us to be forward compatible with the upcoming Blu-Ray player. That's very important to consumers, if you look at the recording video on disk on camcorders, where the market is shifting right now, this is the preferred medium and that is going to translate over to HD," said Vitti. The disks will not, however, be compatible with existing DVD players.

Interestingly, the AVCHD announcement is mirroring a trend in the camcorder market of announcing higher end compression formats which utilize existing media to squeeze a higher picture quality onto the same media type. That strategy also allows to consumers to smoothly transition to a new format while not losing compatibility for their older camcorder media. The other major benefit is that, by adapting a new video format to an existing media, the company can take advantage of the already low price of the existing media. DVD disc prices are already very low and accessible by consumers. With a new format would come high priced media and a long development curve to get the price down.

Sony started this trend with their introduction of Digital8, which recorded a digital signal onto 8mm and Hi8 tapes which had been on the market for many years previously as an analog format. HDV also records a newer compression format onto an older tape format by taking a high definition signal, encoding it in MPEG, and squeezing it on MiniDV tapes. MiniDV had been on the market for seven years before HDV was announced. DVDs were announced 11 years ago. Now, because of the popularity of DVD camcorders, Sony and Panasonic are following the historical trend.

Panasonic is stressing that the AVCHD format is not being announced in lieu of eventual Blu-Ray camcorders. Rather, the company confirmed that they hope to one day introduce Blu-Ray.  AVCHD is being announced so that the companies can get HD camcorders recording to optical media into the hands of consumers as fast as possible. "Both [formats] will be able to coexist in the market in the future," stated Desmond "High definition is penetrating the homes at a very quick rate. We are a leader in plasma TV so we understand how fast that is growing. We want to give the consumer high quality high definition on a disk as quickly as possible."