Kuroutoshikou brings ExpressCards to your desktop

Japanese manufacturer Kuroutoshikou looks to be one of the first, if not the first, to bridge the gap between your ExpressCard and your desktop computer with its new PCI Express-based adapter. Just pop the low-profile card into an available PCIe slot, slide in your ExpressCard of choice (54 or 34, it would seem), and in no time you'll be rocking card-based SATA, tuners, and EV-DO as no one intended it -- confined to your desk. As a bonus, Kuroutoshikou will also give you an extra USB 2.0 port. Look for the card to be available in Japan later this month for ¥4,980, or just over $40 US if you're planning on doing the importing thing.

[Via Impress]

[Jon Gray @ Aug 12th 2006 3:38AM]

This might be useful if you've already bought cards for your laptop, but a bit of a sod if you have to lose a PCI-e slot.

[Jon Gray @ Aug 12th 2006 3:41AM]

Thank god I refrained from say '1st Post!' lol

[Meenor @ Aug 12th 2006 3:57AM]

lol )

[Matt @ Aug 12th 2006 10:25AM]

in that picture it looks like it's a PCI-Express x1 connection, not x16. x16 is the connection that most video cards hook into. Almost all new motherboards come with 1 or 2 pci-e x1 and pci-e x16 slots, so for those of you thinking you'll lose the ability to go dual video cards if you get this thing, you won't ;)

[Big Sam @ Aug 12th 2006 11:42AM]

Just last night a friend of mine was just asking if something like this was available. Great timing :)

[Rus @ Aug 12th 2006 3:49PM]

Mac compatibility?

[Wes Felter @ Aug 12th 2006 5:34PM]

It should be OS-independent; it looks like a totally passive adaptor.

[lettcco @ Aug 12th 2006 7:16PM]

good luck installing the driver. Japanese are pretty self-centric and usually won't make it non-japanese friendly.

[Dan @ Aug 13th 2006 10:44PM]

What we need is the opposite of that;
expresscard34 plugs into your laptop
with a little cable that goes to a little
box that you can slide a PCIe card into, aka AJA or
Blackmagic card. A great location shooting solution
that would allow HDSDI or SDI in and timecode in plus
full monitoring.
This is needed for multicam shoots where you want to
record to hard drive instead of tape. Right now you have to use
a G5 Powermac (or now a Mac Pro) to do this.

Dan