IBC 2007: Choice Leads the Way Toward HD

Last Thursday, we kicked off IBC with a press conference to announce our strategy and vision. At the time, two key words rang out: innovation and choice.

Today, as we wind down another fantastic week at IBC, we leave knowing our strategy is working. For the past five days, the stand has been home to huge customer wins, landmark sales and industry awards.

But, despite the excitement of being here and experiencing the mood at the stand, the best part has been seeing the crowd’s reaction to our products - from the moment the RAI opened at 9:30 each morning, until the close of each day, visitors were queuing to get their hands on our cameras and experience the technology first hand. While we’re leaving feeling a little worse for wear, our line up has never looked fresher.

If you read Monday’s IBC Daily¸ you’d know that yesterday British dealer Mitcorp signed a deal to buy 100 XDCAM EX camcorders – a significant sale for Sony and a great success for the team. At just 6,500 Euros, the XDCAM EX camcorder is opening up solid-state HD filming to an entirely new market and the demand is deafening. Complete with the CineAlta badge, new CMOS sensor and “SxS PRO” ExpressCard media, XDCAM EX brings superb picture quality and the best HD workflow solution to the compact camcorder market.

While XDCAM EX is creating new possibilities for the entry level market, we are growing our existing XDCAM HD range to become the strongest one yet. We have added two new camcorders and a new deck to the line up, and have also revealed the latest details of our forthcoming XDCAM HD 422 products. When the XDCAM HD422 begins shipping early next year, broadcasters and producers will have even more choices for accessing HD from entry level and up.

The widespread adoption of our products, along with the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception they’ve received here at IBC, reaffirms that we are successfully meeting the needs of our customers to remain relevant now and in the future.

This year, we promised to “define tomorrow”- I hope you will agree that during the past five days we did.