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[Peter Bowers]

Hi everyone. Hoping for industry wisdom on this one.

We have several Blackmagic Design Micro SDI to HDMI 12G converters which we've used on our events for a while now, but we've started having problems with them. Spontaneously one will overheat causing it to either flicker on and off or temporarily stop working altogether usually in the middle of an event.

Our setup typically consists of two TVs, two projectors and two floor monitors for presenters to see their slides. SDI cables are run from a Blackmagic TV Studio to each location either individually or looped from one converter to another depending on the layout.

• Overheating has occurred on three different events on three different converters.
• By overheating I mean you couldn't safely handle the converter for more than a couple of seconds without burning yourself.
• Twice it's occurred to a floor monitor which is inside a wooden non-airtight bottomless box with the converter loosely left on the floor. The ambient temperature in side the box was warm but not hot
• The third time it occurred to a TV on a truss, but again the converter was on the floor, not touching any metal or other equipment. In this case the converters SDI Loop out was used to another converter.
• Each time the converter overheated it was swapped out with another which worked normally for the rest of the event.
• The first two converters were returned to the office and tested with no issues. They were then used on subsequent events without issue.
• The USB-C power transformers which powered the converters were also tested and worked fine on subsequent jobs.

Does anyone have any experience of this or advice on methods to avoid this happening. Blackmagic Design's support team had no answers for this situation. I've seen other similar forum posts which don't speak highly of these converters and recommend different brands, but I wanted to see if there was anything specifically we could be doing wrong before exploring that avenue.

Thanks in advance,
Peter.

[Erik Jerde]

Hi everyone. Hoping for industry wisdom on this one.

We have several Blackmagic Design Micro SDI to HDMI 12G converters which we've used on our events for a while now, but we've started having problems with them. Spontaneously one will overheat causing it to either flicker on and off or temporarily stop working altogether usually in the middle of an event.

Our setup typically consists of two TVs, two projectors and two floor monitors for presenters to see their slides. SDI cables are run from a Blackmagic TV Studio to each location either individually or looped from one converter to another depending on the layout.

• Overheating has occurred on three different events on three different converters.
• By overheating I mean you couldn't safely handle the converter for more than a couple of seconds without burning yourself.
• Twice it's occurred to a floor monitor which is inside a wooden non-airtight bottomless box with the converter loosely left on the floor. The ambient temperature in side the box was warm but not hot
• The third time it occurred to a TV on a truss, but again the converter was on the floor, not touching any metal or other equipment. In this case the converters SDI Loop out was used to another converter.
• Each time the converter overheated it was swapped out with another which worked normally for the rest of the event.
• The first two converters were returned to the office and tested with no issues. They were then used on subsequent events without issue.
• The USB-C power transformers which powered the converters were also tested and worked fine on subsequent jobs.

Does anyone have any experience of this or advice on methods to avoid this happening. Blackmagic Design's support team had no answers for this situation. I've seen other similar forum posts which don't speak highly of these converters and recommend different brands, but I wanted to see if there was anything specifically we could be doing wrong before exploring that avenue.

Thanks in advance,
Peter.

I’ve seen BM converters fail enough that I’d never use them in a place that matters.  Decimator Designs MD-HX or MD-LX are my go-to.  The MD-LX is on TVs because those often come with USB ports that you can use to power the converter.

[Tim McCulloch]

Black Magic is aptly named. It's magic if they work reliably.

[Tim Weaver]

Most BM stuff runs uncomfortably hot for some reason. I've had a remarkable amount of their power supplies (basic wall warts) die as well.

[Erik Jerde]

Black Magic is aptly named. It's magic if they work reliably.

Yep, I’ve had orders of magnitude more failures from BM than from Ross, AJA, and Decimator (just to name a few) combined.

[Scott Holtzman]

Yep, I’ve had orders of magnitude more failures from BM than from Ross, AJA, and Decimator (just to name a few) combined.

I have had very good luck with decimators, so so with BM.


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[Peter Bowers]

Thanks everyone for the advice. We're looking into Decimators.

[Jordan Wolf]

Decimator Design, AJA, Datavideo, YellowBrik, and Lumantek all have pretty good track records with their converters.

I have had much better results with the BMD Mini Converters vs the Micro Converters - they seem to handle the self-generated heat MUCH better.

[Steve Ferreira]

We only run Decimators and Theatrixx stuff now. Theatrixx is a bit bulky but they work great.

https://theatrixx.com/en/product/sdixhdmi/

[Adam Kane]

I have had much better results with the BMD Mini Converters vs the Micro Converters - they seem to handle the self-generated heat MUCH better.

^^ This. We've had the same experience. Lots of problems with the Micro's...none with the Mini's.

[ProSoundWeb Community]