The Panasonic SDR 200 SDHC Camcorder

The follow on camera to the Panasonic SDR-100 SDHC Camcorder is the SDR-200. Rather than use MiniDV film, this camera uses the 2-gigabyte secure storage disk. Although this is the average size, larger storage device cards are available. Secure Digital Cards have had a huge impact on all the electronic media, especially those dealing in communications and hobby pursuits such as embroidery sewing machines. Granted that camcorders provided a new scene for the use of the secure digital card but another use was developed in a completely different area. This place has already been identified was embroidery machines. The major sewing machine manufacturers, Pfaff, Brother, Bernina and Singer all during the early 2000s changed from floppy disk to the secure digital card because of the huge data files required to reproduce a desired design. These cards were sold in several popular formats, one 32 megabytes and another 64 megabytes both suitable for storing the designs between 4” x 6” and 9” x 14” in size. This lasted a short time for the dedicated embroidery enthusiast since their designs grew in complexity. Sewing designs are encoded using very complicated software, which after scanning would be processed by proprietary software. Each software suite was different but all did the same as each other. This combined the original design in color, texture, stitch width and length, stitch direction by vector coordinates.



These Secure Digital Cards as of 2006 range from 256 megabyte to 6 gigabytes in memory and are over six times as fast as a computer CD. They surpassed available media almost overnight and they provided a compact means of memory storage that would have increased sewing machine costs immensely. The accommodation of a larger storage medium would drastically increase the size of the machine. This is a similar problem encountered by the manufacturers of camcorders and digital cameras. Their problem has been ideally solved by use of the Secure Digital Card. Camcorders now weigh ounces and are even smaller than the previous handheld cameras using MiniDV tape. The last feature of the secure digital card is that it can be encoded using specified codeword. This allows safeguarding of specific files with embedded software that is not available on CD or floppy disk. Many devices other than sewing machines and camcorder now use them. PDAs, wireless devices that can be used on laptop or desktop models enabling broadcast connection through the wireless router. Other devices use them as well such as digital cameras for storage of pictures, cellular phones for recording database, email, photos and answering service messages and digital audio players for downloaded songs or music. It may be the future of all camcorders. The Japanese price is $265.00 however, who knows what the USA price will be!



The Panasonic SDR-200 SDHC looks like an upgraded model of the Sony HC46, predominantly ugly and obviously created to grab the technological edge and the cheap customer market. It fortunately has a popup flash for both pictures and videos. It has a rear-mounted toggle touch pad with a zoom toggle device.