For the first time saw video on a Mac delivered via Thunderbolt interface! The Telestream Wirecast team were demoing Wirecast using a Matrox MX02 plugged into the Matrox Thunderbolt adapter, plugged into an i7 MacBook Pro. The Matrox adapter should be shipping soon.
Talked with Blackmagic Design about their two Thunderbolt products and they are very bullish about the opportunity. The New Intensity Extreme looks the part but was not shown working. We will have to wait for December to find out how well it works.
The AJA IO XT looks and feels like a very professional piece of kit and was shown working connected to a Canon XF305 (pro ably the most popular camera at the show). While it has 2 SDI Inputs and one HDMI you can only use one at a time. The size begs out for a dual 1u rack mount kit to put two in a 1 u space. They were non committal on this but did say lots of people have said the same thing.
The guys at Sonnet Technology were showing a prototype 1 PCIe slot Thunderbolt expansion chassis. They also have a 2 slot version and a 1u rack mount version in development, all expected to ship in November.
But here is the BIG BUT – any PCIe adapter will need to have it’s device driver updated to work in a Thunderbolt expansion chassis and they are not aware of any SDI / HDMI card manufacturers doing this. So looks like it will be quite a while before these expansion units can be used for video capture.
