Taranex Mini Hdmi to Sdi and LUTS

I just got off the phone with BMD support. I asked if the Hdmi to SDI flavor allowed LUTS and the rep said no. But he didn't have any specifics. Does anyone know why the SDI to Hdmi does allow LUTS but the Hdmi to SDI does not?

Thanks in advance!

I think one of the intended uses of the Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI is to allow monitoring of SDI video signals on relatively inexpensive HDMI monitors or TVs. There are quite a few 4K monitors and TVs with HDMI inputs that can be useful for monitoring purposes. And in this case it may be useful to be able to apply a color correction LUT for more accurate monitoring.

In contrast there are far fewer 4K monitors with SDI inputs and they tend to be more expensive (even the HD monitors with SDI inputs can get kind of pricey). And the higher end production reference monitors often have fairly extensive built in color controls and in some cases LUT support as well.

Now some people have expressed an interest in using a Teranex Mini for other purposes, such as color correction for live video sources going into a video switcher, for example. And in that case it might be useful to have the LUT functionality on the Teranex HDMI to SDI converter.

I'm not sure if there is a technical limitation of the hardware which prevents this, or if it's just a feature that Blackmagic didn't consider or didn't think people would find that useful on the HDMI to SDI units.

Exactly! I would really love this functionally for live video. There is an eithernet plug which allows the Sdi to Hdmi to carry a lut. What gives!?

I am posting in this thread for the first time because I wanted to sound off on the topic of of LUTs on the current generation of HDMI to SDI converters, or rather the lack thereof.

I find the that the seemingly end-user cost difference of having the LUT Engines put in of $40 (I'm comparing HDMI to SDI 6G mini converters to their complementary product.) I of course made the bone headed move of buying before reading about them thouroughly, so I found this out the hard way (not that I blame BMD for this error in judgement because I do not.)

However, I wanted to find out the reason from you guys through official press and media news releases, and I found out that the real reason why it was not put in was because of cost, and because PC video output can be calibrated, so there is no need. The quote from a conference from Grant Petty about an update to the Converter Line-up published on Youtube November 14th, 2017 stated the reason,"...[HDMI to SDI 6G Mini Converter's] core function is really to convert from HDMI to SDI, but it doesn't have the 3DLUTs and Down-Converter that the other model has because it really doesn't need it because you can change the computer settings to match what you want...."** When I heard this, the first thing that came to mind was," you said that this was also to plug in consumer devices as well!!!"

I think that this idea needs to be revisited as there are many consumer devices outside of PC/Mac computers that could use calibration. The First that comes to mind are consumer HDMI camcorders color/light calibration controls on these things are limited/non-existent. The other that comes to mind are devices like video game consoles that might benefit from a Calibration LUT because of a lack of a calibrated RGB output (this may require scan converters before it.)

I know it is too late now, but I would hope that the Blackmagic Design Team reconsiders these converters in its next product revision.

Thank You

** Start at about 17:00 =