new PCIe mac

[Steve Connor]

Decklink HD cards with PCiE too please – oh and an upgrade deal!

Steve Connor
Cardinal HD

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[Robin Richardson]

Just wondering if you know…Does getting the Quad G5 mean I cant use my current card the Decklink Pro? That would be a bummer.

thanks for any info
Robin

[Bob Zelin]

I think that it would be proper for Blackmagic to address what is going to happen to the current ENTIRE LINE of existing Blackmagic cards. Of course, this is going to apply to all AVID, AJA, and Aurora products as well (as well as everything else that’s out there from ATTO, Adaptec, etc.).

Bob Zelin

[Sean Oneil]

The Blackmagic Extreme is already available in PCIe.

I think BMD is the last company you have to worry about. Since their products work with Windows PCs, they’ve been migrating to PCIe for a while now. I’m sure they’re prepared for the day Apple makes the switch (today).

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Kaspar,

Yes, there is hope 🙂 Previous shipping dates have been passed so I’m not going to promise anything but I am optimistic that Multibridge Extreme will be shipping in that timeframe.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

PCIe slots require PCIe cards and do not provide backward compatibility for PCI and PCI-X cards. Apple has switched to the PCIe bus in the new G5’s and it’s a logical progression but also a technological leap. In other words your existing DeckLink Pro will not work in the new PCIe Macs. In fact the slots are completely different so you cannot make the mistake of inserting a PCI card in a PCIe slot. Apple are continuing to make the G5/2.7 DP with PCI-X available for anyone who wants a very fast G5 but wants to use existing PCI and PCI-X cards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Kaspar,

Grant hopes to start shipping in a couple of weeks once we’ve finished testing and fixed any bugs found during testing 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

[Bob Zelin] “I think that it would be proper for Blackmagic to address what is going to happen to the current ENTIRE LINE of existing Blackmagic cards.”

Hi Bob,

Following is a message which Grant Petty asked me to post in this forum regarding Apple’s new Power Mac G5’s with PCI Express and products from Blackmagic Design.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

Hi,

As you would know, Apple has announced the new Power Mac G5 machines, and as these are based on PCI Express (PCIe), I want to update you on the status of the PCI Express models of our products.

Available today is the DeckLink Extreme PCIe product which is a PCI Express version of the popular DeckLink Extreme card. This card is currently shipping in a product box that has stickers indicating it is a Windows product only. However this card is also compatible with these new Mac systems, and the current DeckLink Macintosh 5.1.1 driver already has support for this card running in the new Mac systems.

Please ignore the sticker on the box showing that DeckLink Extreme PCIe is Windows only, as it is fully Mac OS X compatible, using the latest drivers from our web site.

If you have one of these new Macs already, please download the driver and check it out. Functionality is the same as the current DeckLink cards, it’s just the PCI interface that is different.

All other models of DeckLink standard definition cards should be shipping within the week. I will let you know as the other models become available.

DeckLink HD cards are only a few weeks away, and we are working hard to complete these and have them shipping before the Quad Core Mac G5 systems are available.

All prices of PCI Express (PCIe) based products are the same cost as the existing PCI and PCI-X models.

Some customers have already asked for PCIe upgrades, and unfortunately if we want to sell affordably priced products there is currently no scope for upgrades. Generally at these price points, it’s rare for upgrades, and I think customers have got very good value from the DeckLink cards.

We also expect to keep selling PCI models for some time to come.

Multibridge Extreme has been delayed and has not shipped yet. The good news is we are just about complete on this product, and think it’s only a week or two away at the most. We are starting to build production units today. However we want to make sure everything is well tested before shipping, so we expect another week of testing before everything is checked out.

I will let you know over the next week or two as the new PCIe versions of our products are released.

Regards,

Grant
Blackmagic Design

The DeckLink Extreme PCIe is compatible with the new range of Power Mac G5 computers with PCI Express.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Maybe this new Mac is what was holding up the Multibridge?

Neil

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Neil,

The new Macs were just one of many factors. We originally believed the new Macs were going to have a mix of PCIe and PCI-X slots so that meant we could just dedicate our PCIe efforts to working on the new Multibridges and our existing PCI and PCI-X cards could be worked upon at a later date for PCIe. A few months ago we found out that the new machines would exclusively support PCIe and that meant we would need to transition our entire PCI-based product line to PCIe. That’s quite a few products to transition in a short period of time at the same time as continuing to work on the PCIe-based Multibridge products.

That was a factor but then there have been many other factors such as buggy chips (sent back to the supplier for resolution) and related issues that we’ve had to work through and resolve. We ordered a bunch of power supplies after testing engineering samples thoroughly only to find that the first volume batch had a power connector which was too big to fit in the power socket! It’s unbelievable some of the things that happen when developing a complex product and we’ve just wanted to deal with any issues that we find and then release it when we’re happy. It’s tantalisingly close 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design