A brand of the world's biggest consumer
corporation, Matsushita. Pioneered "organic edge design" in the late 80s, meaning that products started to have generic body like curves as oppossed to geometric designs.
Same company as Technics, National, Panavison, Panaflex and Pana-anything. Their equipment has been used in filming for ages.
Not quite as boring or planned
redundancy compliant as other brands like Sony, whom tend to disable features on cheaper products and make less and less reliable laser pickups
all the time.
Shop around before buying Panasonic, they only make a handful of really good products.