New VJ hardware tends to be few and far between, so we’ve been closely watching the P-10, now officially the “P-10 Visual Sampler.” (The “P” stands for “presenter,” but Edirol has changed from “visual presenter” to “visual sampler” to emphasize the P-10’s sampling features — smart move.) First spotted earlier this spring, the P-10 boasts a built-in display and pads, the ability to play straight from memory cards, and sampling from a live analog video/audio source.

Specs:

• MJPEG movie and still JPEG support
• Slide show capabilities
• Playback and recording from SD(HC) memory cards
• Capture from live video input (onboard composite, S-Video, and even audio in and out)
• Internal color display, 12 trigger pads, dedicated effects dials

About those effects — we now know what they are, and they should look pretty familiar to Edirol owners:

• Movie: Repeat A<>B
• Reverse
• Strobe
• Speed
• Color
• Output Fade
• Still Image: Slide Show, Strobe, Color, Output Fade

There’s also V-LINK support for integration with other Edirol products, though I would imagine you’d mostly want to use the onboard controls.

I think Edirol might be going a bit far when they say this is “a faster, more elegant and reliable alternative to using a laptop on stage.” I’m not sure what they mean by “faster,” and the main problem is that this really isn’t a laptop alternative — laptops just do more. But that said, if I had the cash I’d love to have one of these units alongside a laptop and mixer, and imagine gigging VJs will find the quick SD card capture to be just invaluable, especially if they pick up a camera that saves MJPEGs.

The deal killer for many is likely to be price, but to put this in perspective, this is a lot more compact and flexible than the Korg Kaptivator, which cost about twice as much.
I hope to get a look at the P-10 when it arrives stateside. Speaking of which…

Pricing and Availability

Edirol sells to a lot of different markets, so it’s tough to keep up with everything they’re doing — we know you’re in lots of different parts of the world. So far, I know this:

UK: £799 list inc VAT, shipping now
Europe: Appears to be EUR1090, also shipping now
North America: US$1195 list, not officially launched yet (expected later this month)
Australia: Awaiting confirmation

P-10 at Edirol Europe

P-10 at Global Site (including owners’ manual)

If you hear more in your corner of the world (hello, Japan and Brazil!), let us know.

Related posts:

• Edirol P-10: Record, Playback MJPEG on Removable SD Cards
• Edirol V-8 Mixer: 8 Ins, 3 Outs, Computer Ins Mean V-4, The Next Generation
• VJ Gear (Expensive One): V-440 Takes Video Mixing HD
• VJ Gear (Cheap One): motion dive .tokyo performance package
• Update on Edirol CG-8 Video Synth