Blackmagic Design Inc. has announced the new DVI Extender, an extremely small DVI-to-SDI converter that enables computer monitors to be placed long distances away from computers using SDI video cabling to Blackmagic Design’s HDLink Pro monitoring converter. DVI Extender is on display at Blackmagic Design Booth SL10820.
Because DVI Extender uses an SDI connection for its connection to the computer monitor, the monitor can be extended via SDI distribution or routing. This is unlike any other computer monitor extender product in the market which only use proprietary cable connections, says a representative.
DVI Extender's use of a standard SDI BNC cable enables more than one monitor to be connected to the computer. If used with an SDI router such as Blackmagic Design’s Enterprise Videohub, users could connect up to 288 computer monitors from the one computer.
DVI Extender was designed to help reduce the cost of building postproduction facilities. Generally, there are three costs for building a postproduction company: equipment, floor space, and cabling. With DVI Extender all the equipment can be kept in one area, so all video connections are short with only a few long cables needed to be run to each editing room. This reduces cable cost dramatically.
Because floor space is also costly, DVI Extender lets users route each workstation to different size rooms, depending on the work being done. For example, you could use a small room or cubicle when there is no client attending the edit, and then instantly route the video and computer monitor to a large, elegantly designed edit suite when the client arrives. This lets postproduction companies optimize their layout in new and exciting ways not possible before. Now client rooms can be larger and more luxuriously designed while non-client editing rooms can be reduced in size.
DVI Extender also allows normal DVI to SDI video conversion for high-quality SDI video output direct from the GPU-accelerated 3D graphics engine built into modern computers. DVI Extender plugs into the computer’s DVI port and then appears as a computer monitor. If the user selects any video resolution, DVI Extender will then output regular SDI Video with embedded audio from the computer--enabling low-cost and quality real-time computer graphics output.
DVI Extender uses USB for power, and when plugged into any of the USB ports of the host computer, will power on and off as the computer is turned on and off. With USB power, DVI Extender is compact, and is perfect as a graphics output for laptop computers, as no power supply is required and DVI Extender will power directly from the laptop computer’s battery.
DVI Extender is shipping in May 2009 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide for $395.