HDMI burst onto the professional video scene from its origins in the home theater world, and now it´s touted as an affordable I/O alternative to HD-SDI. Blackmagic Intensity (only $295 MSRP), a PCI Express board, allows video capture of HD video direct from the CCDs of cameras with HDMI output (such as the Sony HVR-V1U and the Grass Valley Infinity), bypassing HDV compression entirely. With its HDMI output, the dual-platform Intensity can feed HDMI-enabled HD monitors in the edit suite. It also does cross-conversion from 720- to 1080-line HD and vice versa, and downconversion from those formats to SD.

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