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Trepidations...
I don't think that it's unique to Matrox that marketing decisions to be first out of the gate on a new product ends up creating a field of de-facto beta testers who thought that they bought a finished product. When the original Rainbow Runner Studio was released (how long ago? It seems like yesterday!), it was full of bugs and problems. The fact is that this messageboard was born on the heels of those problems, and was originally called "This Idiot's Guide to the Rainbow Runner".
It was the best part of a year after I purchased my original Rainbow Runner / Mystique220 before the drivers for this beast finally matured. In conjunction, however, Ulead's MediaStudio Pro, which was packaged with the RR-S, wasn't bug free for about the same time period. So, it wasn't just Matrox that slipped the marketing ploy into the game to make me a long suffering beta tester, when I only started out as an unsuspecting customer for a mere $300.
By the time my RR-S had decent software, it was discontinued and superseded by the Marvel. I watched the whole nine yards of unsuspecting customers who purchased this product come screaming into this forum over the past year, posting the same kind of angry and frustrated messages that the previous batch of RR-S had posted the year before.
Over on other message boards that focused on other NLE products, however, I saw the same or worse, throughout this past couple of years. My conclusion is that ALL these manufacturers are doing the same thing to be first out of the gate: releasing products that aren't fully developed, and funding the development with the product's sales.
The one thing that strikes me about the Matrox products so far, however, is that aside from obvious defects in manufacturing that turned up here and there, those pieces of hardware that were in use when the software matured were fully usable and performing the way that people wanted them to perform. In other words, the problem with Matrox has been slow and weak software. The hardware, however, has been quite good, in the long run.
Consequently, I expect that there will be some shortcomings in the first release of the RT2000, in that some buyers will be climbing the walls trying to figure out why the thing doesn't work. That's what I expect to happen with the first batch out the door. If this doesn't happen, and they manage to ship something that actually works in the first release, then I'll be pleasantly surprised.
So far, in the past two years, the only NLE consumer/prosumer level product I've heard of that has actually accomplished this is the DVRaptor. I don't own one of those, however... I'm still pumping out video with my RR/Mystique220 at this time. And I'll continue to use what I've got until I see that the RT2000 is a mature enough product to make the transition.
Personally, I don't think Matrox's past performance deserves a large customer base of eager buyers, chomping at the bit to obtain the RT2000 the instant it's released. It does warrant a large customer base that sits patiently, and waits for their typical, long term and methodical resolution of the inevitable software problems that this product will turn up by its unsuspecting beta testers. I, for one, have no desire to play that game with them a second time.
I don't think that it's unique to Matrox that marketing decisions to be first out of the gate on a new product ends up creating a field of de-facto beta testers who thought that they bought a finished product. When the original Rainbow Runner Studio was released (how long ago? It seems like yesterday!), it was full of bugs and problems. The fact is that this messageboard was born on the heels of those problems, and was originally called "This Idiot's Guide to the Rainbow Runner".
It was the best part of a year after I purchased my original Rainbow Runner / Mystique220 before the drivers for this beast finally matured. In conjunction, however, Ulead's MediaStudio Pro, which was packaged with the RR-S, wasn't bug free for about the same time period. So, it wasn't just Matrox that slipped the marketing ploy into the game to make me a long suffering beta tester, when I only started out as an unsuspecting customer for a mere $300.
By the time my RR-S had decent software, it was discontinued and superseded by the Marvel. I watched the whole nine yards of unsuspecting customers who purchased this product come screaming into this forum over the past year, posting the same kind of angry and frustrated messages that the previous batch of RR-S had posted the year before.
Over on other message boards that focused on other NLE products, however, I saw the same or worse, throughout this past couple of years. My conclusion is that ALL these manufacturers are doing the same thing to be first out of the gate: releasing products that aren't fully developed, and funding the development with the product's sales.
The one thing that strikes me about the Matrox products so far, however, is that aside from obvious defects in manufacturing that turned up here and there, those pieces of hardware that were in use when the software matured were fully usable and performing the way that people wanted them to perform. In other words, the problem with Matrox has been slow and weak software. The hardware, however, has been quite good, in the long run.
Consequently, I expect that there will be some shortcomings in the first release of the RT2000, in that some buyers will be climbing the walls trying to figure out why the thing doesn't work. That's what I expect to happen with the first batch out the door. If this doesn't happen, and they manage to ship something that actually works in the first release, then I'll be pleasantly surprised.
So far, in the past two years, the only NLE consumer/prosumer level product I've heard of that has actually accomplished this is the DVRaptor. I don't own one of those, however... I'm still pumping out video with my RR/Mystique220 at this time. And I'll continue to use what I've got until I see that the RT2000 is a mature enough product to make the transition.
Personally, I don't think Matrox's past performance deserves a large customer base of eager buyers, chomping at the bit to obtain the RT2000 the instant it's released. It does warrant a large customer base that sits patiently, and waits for their typical, long term and methodical resolution of the inevitable software problems that this product will turn up by its unsuspecting beta testers. I, for one, have no desire to play that game with them a second time.
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