downcoverter any good

[Sandy McLennan]

was just wondering if any one had purchased a decimator HD
SDI downconverter by redbyte as i want to get one and just
want some feed back first. let me know if there is any happy
decimator customers out there??? cheers

 

[jamesedwelland]

Havnt tested mine yet - bought it for a dry hire job. No reports of problems. Seem to be popular here in uk with hire companies...

james

 

[ericyoung]

Works fine with non-menus output of Red to composite PAL/NTSC.

Wish it did SD-SDI too, but then it'd cost more.

 

[Herring]

I have been using two on a shoot for a week now and they are great.
Cheap, small and with a built in aspect ratio conversion.

Joost

 

[Chris Parker]

yep, they work great.

 

[Alexander Christ]

No problems with the Decimator on a 5 week feature film.

 

[D Namir]

works fine for me

 

[Mike N]

Works fine with non-menus output of Red to composite PAL/NTSC.

Wish it did SD-SDI too, but then it'd cost more.

What's the difference between HD and SD SDI appart from the lower resolution signal. Why wouldn't I use a simple component or composite output ? And SD SDI will only work with devices that have an SDI IN port right ?

 

[ericyoung]

What's the difference between HD and SD SDI appart from the lower resolution signal. Why wouldn't I use a simple component or composite output ? And SD SDI will only work with devices that have an SDI IN port right ?

Well, SD-SDI is better quality for monitoring than component (not available on the Decimator) and much better than composite, but SD-SDI monitors are more commonplace and a lot cheaper than HD-SDI monitors. And if you're using a Decimator instead of the AJA, cost is definitely an issue!

PAL/NTSC monitoring of an HD or higher resolution signal is really only useful for framing and checking the signal is in colour and moving.