NAB 09 was interesting…The company to bring out the most interesting products and a major surprise was Panasonic. 

1. Panasonic P2 ‘E’ card was the major announcement at NAB bringing down the price of P2 by 66% making P2 far more affordable and in my opinion long over due.

2. The new camcorder HPX-301 has already been upgraded with a new firmware announced at NAB.

3. A new 16 input HD-SDI vision mixer the HS450

4. The HMC-41 an AVCHD mini 3 chip camcorder.

5. The HMR-10 POV camera with detachable video cable.

Sony on the other hand brought out some Hi end cameras for the broadcast market and a Hi Rez viewfinder HDVF-C30WR it was hinted that they would bring out an EX-5 but that in my opinion would have been stupid as too many updates to the EX range too soon would alienate hard core Sony customers.

JVC brought us the GY-HM700 and the GY-HM100 solid state camcorders pre NAB so that left JVC with no new goodies to announce.

Canon have gone into hibernation…we were hoping for their professional solid state HD camcorder but not a tweet.

It was rumored that Apple would preview their new operating system “Snow Leopard” and it was hinted they might show a sneek peek of Final Cut Studio 3 but as far as I am aware this did not happen. There seems to have been a fair commitment to Blu-ray throughout NAB which must be giving Apple some heartache as to date Apple have not publicly endorsed Blu-ray and in my opinion falling way behind market leaders like Adobe.  

So my NAB 09 winner for the most welcome announcement for video professionals goes to Panasonic for their introduction of the P2 ‘E’ card.