One of the great things about the NAB show is finding hidden gems in the midst of all those vendor booths. If you use a Mac, and you’re one of those who likes previewing footage on a large living room monitor, these low cost solutions may be just the ticket. Speaking with Jessica Pascual of Apogee Inc., here’s what I learned about these handy little devices.
Sold under the Kanex brand, Apogee Inc. offers a pair of HDMI solutions.
The iAdapt 5.1 takes video from the Apple’s mini-display port and gets 5.1 channel surround audio using Toslink coming from the audio mini-jack. Both signals are then sent out over a single HDMI cable to any HDMI capable monitor.
The iAdapt 2.0 has the same video capability, but only takes 2 channel analog audio from the Apple’s mini-jack.
By the way, power for both devices is supplied using USB so you’ll need to have an unused port, either built-in or through a powered USB hub.
The iAdapt utilizes HDMI 1.3b and provides full 1080P output with 12 bit per channel deep color resolution.
Another product they are showing is designed to take advantage of the 27″ iMacs that support video input. The Kanex XD will allow you to connect any device that offers HDMI output to your 27″ iMac’s mini-display port input. In the booth, they demonstrated connection of the three major video game consoles, as well as a Blu-Ray disc player to the aforementioned port on the iMac.
Pricing for the Iadapt units are $69.99 for the 5.1, and $59.99 for the 2.0 version.
The Kanex XD unit sells for $149.99 and for that price you get an HDMI interface cable and a mini-display port cable, making it a ready to use solution, right out of the box.
For more information, visit http://www.kanexlive.com.
