Sony is expanding its XDCam line of tapeless acquisition technologies with the introduction of the PMW-500 shoulder-mount professional camcorder. The new camcorder combines the picture quality and performance of Sony’s PDW-F800 optical disc camera with the operational flexibility of recording onto solidstate SxS memory cards. The PMW-500 is equipped with three 2/3-inch Power HAD FX CCD image sensors and can record both 1080 and 720 HD pictures at 50 Mb/s. “The PMW-500 represents the next step in the evolution of the XDCam product range of tapeless technologies ” says Bob Ott vice president of product marketing and management Sony Electronics’ Professional Solutions of America. “Customers have been requesting an XDCam HD422 memory camcorder to complement the phenomenally popular optical disc camcorder and this new model is an ideal solution.” The PMW-500 has two slots for recording onto SxS Memory Card cards. First introduced to the XDCAM EX family in 2007 SxS memory cards provide an extremely high level of reliability and fast access to recorded data both critical in demanding professional operations. Sony is also adding a new higher capacity 64GB (SBS-64G1A) card which can record two hours of material at HD422 50Mbps MXF mode or more than 4 hours in DVCam mode and has an increased transfer speed of 1.2Gbps.
