RT2000 vs DV500 review

[Elie]

Hi all,

I just want to put my 2 cents Canadian in for what it's worth these days

Let's talk about the RT2000 a bit here...

Now for $1200 US or $2000 Can. who do you think can buy this card?
Definately a videographer or an editor, somebody in the business to make money.
Lets say I buy the RT2000 for $2000 Can. Do you really think I can efford to play 3D games and mess with my system configuration jeopardizing my business? NO.

In order to prevent problems you really need to setup a system as a turnkey NLE machine, strictly for video editing nothing else, especially for the money your gonna spend.

If I can efford to buy the RT2000 I can definately efford to buy a second system just for gaming with what ever configuration I want.

The issue of why Matrox chose to go with a specially modified G400 specifically for the RT2000 is great because it works, even 2 years down the road it'll work, think about it, you don't have to worry about compatibility issues and or driver problems.

I can see it now, all the calls to Pinnacle's technical support complaining why certain video cards don't work with the DV500.

The RT2000 to me is a worry and hastle free setup, you basically install it, and it works.

I'm just looking at it from a business point of view.

Regards,
Elie

[DaddyBay]

Elie,

I would guess that your assessment makes sense for the business user. However as merely a video editing enthusiast I find the marriage of the capture card to the graphics adapter to have a serious drawback, which is of course that one cannot upgrade the graphics card (at least Matrox will not make any commitment to that effect, though in the end they may do it). I acknowledge that the union results in unprecedented effects for the price. If I get an RT2000, I may even decide it is worth the sacrifice.

I regard the "hastle free setup" argument as a red herring. Sure it may be a hassle to get things going at the start with the DV500, but once you have everything working, you are set until you get the next video card. I think that (other considerations aside) the hassle would be worth it in order to get dual monitor DualHead support while editing (G400 + DV500), which ironically is not possible with the RT2000.

As far as dedicating a computer to NLE, well yes I would do this, but if I have a G400, I am going to play EMBM games on it. I would make an NLE boot partition (and a backup partition for it) and a game boot partition.

[This_Idiot]

Yep, for £1,000, $1200 or 2K Can, you are definitely investing in major equipment and it would be wise to decide where your priorities lie.

I don't think that I am a particular well-off hobbyist, but I don't dare let messing around with my config interfere with the day-to-day stuff that I have to do with my PC (including trying to run the site from time to time). Therefore I have 2 systems. The lower spec machine is used for all HW and driver testing (and dare I say it, the occasional game). It is also set up as a dual-boot with W98 (currently) and NT4. Nothing valuable is kept on this machine so that I can always rebuild (somehow). PC1 is still relatively low-spec, but does everything I want. When I need to reload this sucker, I have a lot of work to do copying all the necessaries over to PC2 across a (slow) network connection.

I think that the point I'm trying to make is that the RT2K is really not aimed at the average person on the street, and that a certain amount of general PC knowledge and certainly at least a general idea of how PC vid-editing hangs together is required.

And in all the excitement, I forgot to ask Matrox what games would be bundled with the package !

[SwAmPlAdY]

Howdy. A serious video system with either the RT or the Miro will probably cost around $5k with all the hard drives, scsi raid, etc.

HOPEFULLY, you'll have a pretty good cam to go with it.

Why anyone would want to worry about games in this type of system deserves to go bankrupt.

Here's a typical scenario. You get the DV500 and a graphic card. All is perfect until you get a new graphic card. Now you have overlay problems.

The graphic card guys tell you they support overlay.

Pinnacle tells you that the new card doesn't.

What you gonna do now?

As Elie said, someone using the RT as a main source of income is not going to take a chance on downtime for a lousy game.

If he can't afford another system for games, he should sell ice cream instead.

Besides, the G400 is loaded with features that Matrox can use later on. I'm pretty sure that they'll have some kind of plugins to take take advantage of their EMBM support or maybe do something else with their dualhead.

No other graphic card will allow you to do this with the pinnacle card.

Also, are you people fogetting that Pinnacle CHARGES for every new feature in a driver release? ex: for the smart render feature, they soaked alot of people for $200 for this new feature.

They also charged to upgrade from premiere 4.2 to 5.0 where Matrox gave the upgrade for MSpro for free (2.5 to 5.0) and no charge for cutlist.

SwAmPy

[Keith Wiebe]

To SwAmPy:
The RRS was advertised to use cut-list before it even had the software out for it! They were obligated to give it for free because they advertised it! Also the RRS as far as I'm concerned wasn't useable until the latest drivers came out which was about 1.5 yrs after introduction! I will have to say that the RR came with the Ulead 5.0VE software which beats the pants off of Premiere LE 5.1!

[jeff b]

>>This box cost $1150 USD two months ago:
PIII-500 on Asus P2B-F in tower case
10.2 gig WD UDMA system drive
256 meg RAM
(no video card)
40x CD ROM, 56K modem, floppy, etc.

I already had the following which I added in:
17" CTX monitor ($200 USD)
Promise FastTrack 66 ($139 USD)
4 10.2 WD UDMA drives ($125 each)
HP 8200 CD Writer ($250 USD)

So, that adds up to $2239 USD. Right now, I'm using the Mystique220/RR-S in this system. I know that I could probably get this same platform today for under $2k, as even in the couple of months since I made my most recent purchase, prices keep falling. Realistically, one doesn't have to have a FastTrack and 4 drives, or a CD Writer. To get up and running, one would really only need one extra drive for about $200 USD, plus the monitor, bringing the initial cost of the system down into the $1300 to $1500 USD range.

In other words, the Matrox RT2000 cost will be, for all intents and purposes, about the same (or less) than a computer needed to run it if one purchases everything all at once. Looking at the system requirements for RT2000, I'm sure one could easily spend less for the whole computer and have everything run perfectly okay.

So, basically, all I'm saying here is that when you're talking about a video capture card/NLE package that costs more than the rest of the system it runs inside of, then you're not talking about a platform for games.