Blackmagic Design dramatically expanded the capabilities of its Teranex Express, adding real-time full motion standards conversions for SD, HD and Ultra HD formats. The company said a free software update to version 3.2 will allow conversions between any SD, HD, and UHD formats up to 2160p60.

"When Blackmagic Design introoduced Teranex Express at NAB 2014, it delivered 178 different real-time up- and down-conversions which, combined with the world's first 12G-SDI, made it a great product," said Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty in a prepared statement. "However, we had secret plans to make Teranex Express much more powerful simply by doing software updates in the future." The new version of the Teranex Express can execute 1,089 format conversions, Blackmagic said.

An SD master can be upconverted to HD with frame-rate conversion and removal of 3:2 pulldown in a single step, Blackmagic said. The system's cadence detection and removal works with edited content, Blackmagic said, allowing old SD broadcast masters to be easily corrected for online distribution.

With 12G-SDI connectivity, which is required for UHD at frame rates higher than 30p, Blackmagic said the Teranex Express can quickly update SD or HD content to UHD, and can convert 30P UHD to 60p in real time. The previous Teranex version 3.1 update had added 12G-SDI to quad HD-SDI conversions to the Teranex Express.

The Teranex Express remains available at a list price of $1,395.