Thunderbolt Is Coming. Look Busy.

DV Dude predicted this NAB would see many Thunderbolt announcements, and his
oracle powers proved correct. The nice thing about Thunderbolt (insert your
own sound-effect here) is it adds the capability of high-end products to any
computer with it installed. So the days of not being to add fast drive
arrays or video capture cards to iMacs and Notebooks is quickly coming to an
end. We won't see any Thunderbolt products until summer though. Here is a
selection of announcements:

BlackMagic UltraStudio 3D

Think of it as an external HD Extreme card - HD-SDI, HDMI and component in
and out in a very nice aluminum box, $995, target shipping date is July.

Matrox

Matrox announced that they would ship Thunderbolt MXO2 products in July as
well. And they will have a Thunderbolt adapter for existing MXO2 products
for $299, so if you've already invested in a Matrox MXO2 product, you can
migrate it to a Thunderbolt-equipped computer.

AJA

AJA didn't make any specific Thunderbolt announcements, just that they would
be making them in the future. They were previewing products in their booth,
but any announcements will be down the road.

Sonnet

Sonnet announced various Thunderbolt products - a 4 and 8 bay drive arrays,
Firewire-to-ThunderBolt and Ethernet-to-Thunderbolt adapters, and a very
intriguing EchoExpress, which is a PCIe card chassis, so you can add PCIe
cards to your Thunderbolt connection. Mmm.. Nothing shipping until this
summer.

Much more to come in Thunderbolt land. Stay tuned.