Thunderbolt peripherals announced at NAB this week

Sure, you've got a shiny new MacBook Pro with that top-of-the-line Thunderbolt interface, but odds are that you don't have anything besides a DisplayPort adapter to plug it into yet! Worry not -- the National Association of Broadcasters is meeting in Las Vegas this week, and a few companies there are announcing new products designed to work with the Thunderbolt interface.

Matrox and AJA are announcing breakout boxes to hook up current products to the Thunderbolt port, while Blackmagic Design has a box called UltraStudio 3D designed to transfer high-quality 3D video (that's two different streams in full resolution), and PROMISE is showing off both SAN/FibreChannel adapter boxes and the previously announced RAID hard drive solutions. Not so coincidentally, we were just talking about the likelihood of new Thunderbolt gear on last night's Talkcast.

Before you get too excited, know that most of these product announcements are just that -- the actual products probably won't be out later this year, and most of these products are for high-end audio or video editing rather than anything your average consumer would need. But the key here is that we are seeing some adoption of this new standard at the highest levels, and that's good news for anyone who owns an Apple computer, since Apple has already decided that Thunderbolt is the new interface of choice. Bottom line: That new port on your MacBook Pro has more uses every day.

[via MacRumors]