Panasonic Go On European TV By IT Tour

Panasonic is off on a TV by IT Tour of all the major broadcasters in Europe with the aim to bring Panasonic’s current and future products right into Broadcasters own environments.
This is part of the package of events created at Panasonic to be one of the replacements for showing at IBC. Panasonic say that the new approach is intended to be a more focused and cost effective marketing mix and that takes Panasonic products right to the production industry.
The TV by IT tour is proposed to introduce or reinforce the Panasonic message ‘real IT, real HD. real Flexibility’ to all the key European Broadcasters and introduce the new message,’P2 works’.
Panasonic said it was felt that IBC was not visited by enough content creators and users of broadcast acquisition equipment. Therefore Station Managers and decision makers who did visit the exhibition relied on the influence of the manufactures sales force and their technical managers alone. Users were not always included in this equation and by taking a more focused exhibit to their place of work and showing what Panasonic has to offer, working in a real way; we could rely on user’s pressure to influence decision maker’s choices.
TV by IT will follow the ‘real IT, real HD, real Flexibility’ mantra by showing working examples of all three areas with full support of partner companies who will be working with Panasonic to show the future of IT production in a fully operational server based, IT system with full interconnectivity and will illustrate the simplicity of Panasonic’s P2 infrastructure.
The key issues TV by IT will communicate will be:

• To Showcase Panasonic HD and IT workflows via multiple interfaces in a real working environment from field and studio applications.
• To show that P2 works now! The use of Metadata to speed up the post production workflow and the ease and simplicity of high speed content transfer
• To Introduce the HDX900 and HD 1400 VTR combination which via IEEE offers the fastest and safest transition between old and new production methods and also demonstrates Panasonics continued support for tape in a cost effective tape based HD acquisition route
• To show the AK-HC1500 as a flexible, cost effective answer for specialist production situations and how this offers Broadcasters high quality HD content from a feature packed, highly flexible unit
• To Show the Interconnectivity of Panasonic Products within established IT Workflows by showing supporting products all working in one system
• To show that server based content handling is not a complicated concept and that all users can benefit from seeing just how simple it all is
• To introduce new technology as it becomes available and not wait till the next exhibition or the press for this opportunity.

Using a Gigabyte Ethernet system and with support from Canopus, Apple, Avid and Focus, Panasonic have created several mobile exhibits, neatly packaged as a plug and play, easy to demonstrate, touring exhibitions.
These will, from the end of September till early 2007, travel around Europe giving interested production personnel access to the exhibition and offer them the chance to influence production methods in the future.
(SP)