Those clever sideways thinking engineers over in Colorado have been at it again. Convergent Design really made a huge splash with the NanoFlash miniature off-board HD recorder 5 years ago. It was the first of it’s kind and is still one of the best despite the many other off-board recorders that have since followed CD’s lead.

The Odyssey7 is something rather different, but very similar. Initially what you will be getting is a nice 7″ OLED monitor, priced around $1295 USD. That in itself is amazing enough, a high quality 7″ OLED monitor for a great price with waveform, histogram, peaking etc etc. But the Odyssey units are soooo much more than just monitors. They have built in slots for SSD’s, so yes you’ve guessed it, they can also act as recorder, without needing any hardware changes via a software upgrade option. But wait a minute…… normally upgrades have to be purchased. Yes you can purchase upgrades for your Odyssey but you will also be able to rent them if you only need them occasionally. This is a fantastic concept. You can even “try before you buy” many of the options, for example using it as a recorder in trial mode you will get a watermark burn’t into the recordings.

I’m going to take a close look at the Odyssey at NAB. Just as an OLED monitor with built in LUT’s the price is attractive and it should be a great tool to use with my F5 camera as I can use the Waveform display to check my exposure.

For more details on the Odyssey please follow this link to the Convergent Design website.