ExpressBox: use external PCIe cards with your MacBook Pro

I'm guessing that Kona's IO FW800 breakout box would do a lot of what most people need in a portable HD setup. I guess it's a bit more expensive though (US$3,500). Apple's ProRes codec could change the game a bit.

Another use I can think of is for VJ'ers who need multiple video cards for driving displays.

Phil, stay safe out there.

It seems like a great idea, but the price is kinda sad. At the $700+ price it's a niche device for highly specilized needs (phil). At around $200 it's a device a lot more people may just "find" a reason to use!

The box physically supports a 16x PCIe interface, but only operates at 1x PCIe speed. That's enough for network cards and such, but anyone thinking about using this for serious A/V stuff might wait for a review or make sure there's no restocking fee when buying.

The Magma is fantastic for getting an SDI signal into a MacBook Pro. I've been using it with an AJA capture card and it works like a dream. It's portable and robust. I'm a TV cameraman working in hostile environments in Iraq and Afghanistan and I can't afford to carry around a desktop. Together (Magma and AJA) they're about the same price as a Canopus ADVC1000 but a lot more useful. There is one major gotcha though -- there were huge latency issues trying to play out of the computer. The problem is the expresscard 34 slot is a 1-lane PCIe where as the AJA card I'm using (Kona-LSe) needs a 4-lane PCIe.

Great idea, but seems far too expensive for what it does. I guess it might find a niche amongst the Pro Tools crowd though. Maybe the next version, later this year, will be more affordable.

Not new. Matter of fact several years old. Price is still the same though. World wide sales must be in the dozens. Too bad. It'd be nice.

At that price, practically only pros are even going to consider it, the digidesign example given above is one example. Intensity is a good one too, really, I think Intensity might have been popular at $1000, and that's the combined cost of the Intensity and this box. There's nothing to say that BlackMagic Design won't make an Express Card version.

EC/34 gives 2.5Gbps bandwidth, so I don't know why they are saying 2.0Gbps, unless the remaining 20% is lost to overhead.

Here's why I would use them - it would make a ProTools HD recording set up slightly more portable for doing live work..

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=24&langid=100&

I can think of one reason why you would want this, but it is still too expensive.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/quality/

engadget has a writeup on this too. i really can't think of a use for these outside of getting a dedicated graphics card and those aren't even going to be supported until the next rev of the box. its not that they won't fit, its that they suck too much power. the expressbox can only power cards up to 55 watts or less.