Having recently purchased a Panasonic HD TV with built in SD-Card reader, we planned to load video content in AVCHD format onto an SD-HC card for playback just like the blurb said; it turned out to be harder than we thought.
The plan
The set has an SD-HC reader in the front that allows you to load pictures and movie content for direct playback. For pictures we used JPG files on the card; it worked well if a bit slowly as it loads the pictures, but for video we chose to follow the big, bold banner on the set that proudly announced support for the new AVCHD format.
AVCHD is a Panasonic and Sony initiative to bring high definition at manageable bit rates to the mass market. The standards they put in place stand upon some good technology; mpeg 4 Advanced Video Codec, H.264 standard video and mpeg 4 AAC low complexity audio with six channels; all good stuff.
We created some video in H.264 format and placed it on the SD-Card. The TV looked at the card and announced "No files". Ok, this is just a starting gambit. We looked into AVCHD and at the various instructions (a bit glib) and followed those to the web site in Japan where we found a little more information but still not a lot. Fortunately, we were able to delve into the actual Japanese Japanese site as we have Japanese language people here. What we found were some fairly open compatibility statements that essentially said that we could use up to 32GB SD-HC cards formatted with FAT32 and AVCHD video. Easy right?
With a collection of different cards we set off with NERO Vision software which includes an AVCHD add-on pack to create content. The content looked good; very good... the Panasonic set said "No files".
We tried some different content; MTS, MT2S, MP4, M4V... the Panasonic set said "No files".
We went off the road and tried WMV, AVI, MPEG2 even Quicktime... the Panasonic set said "No files".
Panasonic crack support
We decided to call Panasonic support which is when it really went downhill. Their big sets get the 'Concierge' level service; nice? Not really, the man from Panasonic said:
"Look up Panasonic TV on Google, that's bound to have something"... Oh dear.
They then began reading out the manual to us...
We pressed on and they said:
"You can't have SD-Cards bigger than 4Gb"... That's not what the web site says
"You can't use less than 4GB SD-HC cards"... That's utter non-sense
"It must be the card"... we tried four different cards that all showed jpg files ok but not video
"No, you can't talk to our expert technicians, they all say that you have to have a 4GB card"... more non-sense, we have a 4GB card.
The end of the line
This all went on for a few days; round and round without a single person that understood what we were trying to do until we hit Jemma, Manager at Advisory TV & Radio Labs, LLC in NYC, after speaking with technicians there, she confirmed that the Panasonic TVs will only work with videos recorded on a Panasonic video camera/camcorder. There is a special format generated and the only one recognized by the TV. It will not recognize videos produced from any other source. Hence, their compatibility claim is not "true" MPEG-2/AVCHD.
In summary then; I suspect that the technical support that I can get from my grandmother today would challenge Panasonic technical support... my grandmother died nearly twenty years ago.
Part of marketing a good product is the support; the documentation, and the training and experience of the staff; it's why companies like Apple are perceived so well and Panasonic not.
MPT
Posted
Jul 11 2008, 12:41 PM
by
Michael Thwaite