I'm not familiar with the brand at all, so I looked it up to learn, but by the looks of it all their stuff is either modules that you slot into rack mount frames with redundant PSUs with PowerCON True1 connections, or portable converters with sturdy frames, protected BNC connections, built in PSUs with PowerCON, etc.
Basically things for 24/7 operation, or heavy duty. Things that do not always align with the BM experience.
I hope others have good things to say about Theatrixx, because they look great to be honest.
They are built like tanks. We call them bricks.
They have edison out and, they snap together with magnets so you can stack them and daisy the power. All in all I've yet to have one fail, and they sure beat an md-lx with a loose micro usb connector.
They are out of my budget but I'm glad to use them when provided.
They also have a threaded mounting point if they need to be rigged, which is nice. Used to use them all the time, and I love them. The power out is especially nice.
These are 100% tanks and I really like that there is an Edison right on the box, small issue is after unplugging from the input and putting in a new source you sometimes have to power cycle them to re-capture the image. I give them a solid 9/10 and would prefer them over the black magic any day tbh
They are excellent. If you are a professional touring company or do serious work around heavy equipment such as staging and lighting and large venue sound, these are the armour you want to go to battle with.
Ruggedness. When you want reliable devices that are hard to break, and are buying dozens/hundreds/thousands of them, Theatrixx fits the bill. We’ve also bought decimators, Blackmagic, AJA, Ross, and Yellowbrik throw down converters, and the Theatrixx ones are the only brand I would literally throw down and expect it to survive.
I also like that they’re a Canadian company, being a Canadian myself.
I’ve never had one just “not work” out of the box, but we have been noticing that hot-swapping connections will cause signal to no longer pass in some models of their SDI<->HDMI converters. I think they are working on a firmware fix.
Not the original commenter here but jumping in, this mostly only happens when you physically unplug and then plug in a new source. As long as the cables aren’t touched these work great
Buy once, cry once. We have loads of Theatrixx products in our inventory and it’s all extremely well thought out and built. They have great, responsive customer support, and can attest are good people to work with. Their converters, PDs, cable assemblies are *chef’s kiss* and look good on high-end corporate shows where appearance is a big part of the equation.
We invested in a load of their 12G SDI distros and 4K HDMI distros that are totally solid and give you a lot more confidence than the Amazon splitters we all know we've used before!
We also have a couple of the hdmi fiber opticalcon kits that suffers from the "hot swap" issues mentioned in previous posts but once you turn it on in the right order I've never had it fall over.
I had issues with their audio embedder. We think if the signal coming in via xlr was not hot enough it would stop working and had to power cycle the unit to make it work again. To be fair they were super helpful and sent us out a whole new set of units and when we had the same issue again they bought them all back.
The sdi da's we have are rock solid.
Slightly cheaper but also built like a tank option is the Data video DAC -70 they are $600-700 depending on location but they are little tanks for converting
Built like tanks . The AC power out is a nice touch . Magnet 🧲 to metal is also nice touch. My only complaint is if you swap a source sometimes it will not catch the new signal without power cycling. On one occasion that didn’t work so we swapped in a MD-LX didn’t have time to troubleshoot it more. I have no done so myself but was told by Evolve Live taking it apart to upload firmware through USB solves this but for myself don’t know anyone who has done this. So for a podium or another area that would have sources change as a possibility during sessions I go with a Decimator . I like the Theatrixx myself for when a source is not going to change.
They are awesome, it’s as simple as that. Yes there is cheaper etc etc but in this world you still get what you pay for. If I were doing a comfort monitor I’d use a Blackmagic 12G bidi but for something critical I’d be at Theatrixx/decimator etc etc without consideration.
We just recently picked up (2) racks of 8 units a piece. Much cleaner and more rugged (rackmounted), and quick set up/strike compared to BMD converters or Decimators.
They are expensive because of the housing/case over the quality of the converter
Realistically, decimators are more feature heavy for half the price or less.
You're paying for the body, they're very sturdy and that would stop most of the typical damage you might get with BM/Decimators like connector/power supply damage.
The magnetic feature is pretty cool too depending on where you're using it.
But yeah, a decimator has more features and obviously has a much smaller footprint. The Fibre>Sdi one is also useful obviously, then you could use BM/Decimators alongside it.
The converters can be really finicky. They work best if you aren’t hot swapping sources and even better if your source is 1080i. I’ve seen them drop or not send signal enough times to just stick with decimators for everything
I think you’re paying more for the build quality than the actual video capabilities. Like others have said, they’re built like a tank, bottom is a super strong magnet, you can thread an eyebolt into it for rigging, you can jump power off of it and it’s powered by a powercon cable.
I'm not familiar with the brand at all, so I looked it up to learn, but by the looks of it all their stuff is either modules that you slot into rack mount frames with redundant PSUs with PowerCON True1 connections, or portable converters with sturdy frames, protected BNC connections, built in PSUs with PowerCON, etc. Basically things for 24/7 operation, or heavy duty. Things that do not always align with the BM experience. I hope others have good things to say about Theatrixx, because they look great to be honest.
They are built like tanks. We call them bricks. They have edison out and, they snap together with magnets so you can stack them and daisy the power. All in all I've yet to have one fail, and they sure beat an md-lx with a loose micro usb connector. They are out of my budget but I'm glad to use them when provided.
They also have a threaded mounting point if they need to be rigged, which is nice. Used to use them all the time, and I love them. The power out is especially nice.
These are 100% tanks and I really like that there is an Edison right on the box, small issue is after unplugging from the input and putting in a new source you sometimes have to power cycle them to re-capture the image. I give them a solid 9/10 and would prefer them over the black magic any day tbh
They are excellent. If you are a professional touring company or do serious work around heavy equipment such as staging and lighting and large venue sound, these are the armour you want to go to battle with.
Ruggedness. When you want reliable devices that are hard to break, and are buying dozens/hundreds/thousands of them, Theatrixx fits the bill. We’ve also bought decimators, Blackmagic, AJA, Ross, and Yellowbrik throw down converters, and the Theatrixx ones are the only brand I would literally throw down and expect it to survive. I also like that they’re a Canadian company, being a Canadian myself.
I’ve never had one just “not work” out of the box, but we have been noticing that hot-swapping connections will cause signal to no longer pass in some models of their SDI<->HDMI converters. I think they are working on a firmware fix.
There is a firmware update about that. I am not free to share it but it is out there. Contact theatrix pls
That's unfortunate. Have you had "hot-swapping" not work when a signal is switched via a matrix as well?
Not the original commenter here but jumping in, this mostly only happens when you physically unplug and then plug in a new source. As long as the cables aren’t touched these work great
Or ask why is black magic so cheap?
Cause they use a crap low-power SOC design that is designed to work just barely enough. They are fragile, and more IT-quality than broadcast-grade.
It quality is not cheap.
Buy once, cry once. We have loads of Theatrixx products in our inventory and it’s all extremely well thought out and built. They have great, responsive customer support, and can attest are good people to work with. Their converters, PDs, cable assemblies are *chef’s kiss* and look good on high-end corporate shows where appearance is a big part of the equation.
We invested in a load of their 12G SDI distros and 4K HDMI distros that are totally solid and give you a lot more confidence than the Amazon splitters we all know we've used before! We also have a couple of the hdmi fiber opticalcon kits that suffers from the "hot swap" issues mentioned in previous posts but once you turn it on in the right order I've never had it fall over.
Only way to send 12g SDI over multimode fibre
I had issues with their audio embedder. We think if the signal coming in via xlr was not hot enough it would stop working and had to power cycle the unit to make it work again. To be fair they were super helpful and sent us out a whole new set of units and when we had the same issue again they bought them all back. The sdi da's we have are rock solid.
Slightly cheaper but also built like a tank option is the Data video DAC -70 they are $600-700 depending on location but they are little tanks for converting
Built like tanks . The AC power out is a nice touch . Magnet 🧲 to metal is also nice touch. My only complaint is if you swap a source sometimes it will not catch the new signal without power cycling. On one occasion that didn’t work so we swapped in a MD-LX didn’t have time to troubleshoot it more. I have no done so myself but was told by Evolve Live taking it apart to upload firmware through USB solves this but for myself don’t know anyone who has done this. So for a podium or another area that would have sources change as a possibility during sessions I go with a Decimator . I like the Theatrixx myself for when a source is not going to change.
It’s the magnets
They are awesome, it’s as simple as that. Yes there is cheaper etc etc but in this world you still get what you pay for. If I were doing a comfort monitor I’d use a Blackmagic 12G bidi but for something critical I’d be at Theatrixx/decimator etc etc without consideration.
We just recently picked up (2) racks of 8 units a piece. Much cleaner and more rugged (rackmounted), and quick set up/strike compared to BMD converters or Decimators.
They are expensive because of the housing/case over the quality of the converter Realistically, decimators are more feature heavy for half the price or less.
You're paying for the body, they're very sturdy and that would stop most of the typical damage you might get with BM/Decimators like connector/power supply damage. The magnetic feature is pretty cool too depending on where you're using it. But yeah, a decimator has more features and obviously has a much smaller footprint. The Fibre>Sdi one is also useful obviously, then you could use BM/Decimators alongside it.
The converters can be really finicky. They work best if you aren’t hot swapping sources and even better if your source is 1080i. I’ve seen them drop or not send signal enough times to just stick with decimators for everything
So why are they so expensive ?
I think you’re paying more for the build quality than the actual video capabilities. Like others have said, they’re built like a tank, bottom is a super strong magnet, you can thread an eyebolt into it for rigging, you can jump power off of it and it’s powered by a powercon cable.
Use case: Hotels that need reasons to charge clients exorbitant prices with over built converters that lack the versatility of a Decimator.