So what are the implications for the existing Nitris box and future software upgrades? Is it dead or what? And does that mean trade in and upgrade deals?

Or what...?

Dead!

Don't know what the "upgrade" path will be. I'll try to find out tonight.

By "dead" you suggest that there will be no SW upgrades for those on 'old' Nitris, which I strongly believe to be incorrect.

What features on Nitris DX would make you want to "upgrade"?  I actually see it as a downgrade.  Can you downconvert on the fly and have both SD and HD outputs in a Nitris DX?  I have not studied this in depth. I woud be interested in a side by side comparison.

Jef

jef:

Can you downconvert on the fly and have both SD and HD outputs in a Nitris DX? 

My understanding is that it doesn't do that at this point. Still trying to find out what the "upgrade" path will be. Software updates will continue at least for the foreseeable future, but you will get more performance gains from the DX architecture. The Nitris hardware isn't going to get any better, that is what I mean by "it's dead."

I understand that the Nitris hardware is feature locked.  But if past performance is any indicator with Avid and hardware, the Nitris DX will be feature locked from the start and also "dead". 

So if it is "less featured" than the current Nitris, is it really an upgrade or just a cheaper, less featured box?

Can't find that info anywhere yet.

Jef

I noticed two HD-SDI inputs on the back of the BOB. That indicates to me that 4:4:4 may be an option someday. Or, it could mean it is going to be on the DS next with 4:4:4. 

Point being, it doesn't appear to be feature locked as there is room for expansion.

 I really feel sorry for all of thise who bought Symphony Nitris for about  $100,000   and this box is now old and a new and better box for just $36,000. Adrenalin used to cost more than that. I know it's good for us (I now might buy one) but really feel sorry for some people i know.

Like I asked before:

Is there a feature comparison chart for Nitris DX and regular Nitris?  I have NOT  seen any spec saying  Nitris DX has downconvert / cross convert features.  I have not heard any support for 4:4:4 proxy editing.  There are many features in the regulare Nitris that SEEM to be missing in the Nitris DX box.  Where is the comparison chart?

http://www.avid.com/products/media-composer/nitris-dx/techspecs.asp

Since speculation is not allowed, I will not comment on what is being disscussed in the DS community.

Jef

There is no 4:4:4 in the DX yet (Though there are twin HD inputs...future maybe?) however, the DX does do full downconvert on output. Either letterboxed or Anamorphic. 

If you could post what you find please Terrence and if you do find a comparison chart Jef can you email it to me please. Any info anyone has will be much appreciated.

The only thing missing in DX that I have been able to find so far is that you can't do a downconvert AND and HD output at the same time.

I was told by an Avid sales rep that you would get a NitrisDX system for 20K with your Nitris trade-in. Doesn't seem like a very good deal to me.

In my opinion the big difference is the current Nitris and Nitris DX is that the DX supports thin raster and draft mode. It will work well as both an offline and online system.

If you normally live in a base band online world where you're digitizing HD-SDI, there might not be much of a compelling reason to change the hardware.

Symphony 3.0 will support Vista 64. The Symphony software is still a 32 bit application but and Nitris hardware and software are separate so the software can take advantage of 4 Gig of RAM on its own. This should help relieve the out memory issues with Windows XP.

Bob

BobRusso:

In my opinion the big difference is the current Nitris and Nitris DX is that the DX supports thin raster and draft mode.

Can you explain that for me?

The DX box allows RT encoding and decoding of thin raster formats. So DVCPRO HD and HDV can be resized to full 1920 x 1080 and the CPU and GPU can now use that to work on. 

In the current Nitris, the CPU has to first stretch out the thin raster stuff before it can do anything to it. This is what they meant by "distributing" the work between the GPU, CPU and Nitris DX.