little poll question

[coolfish]

in light of the news that Matrox will discontinue development for driver support for g400/rrg in win2k (something that was evident a few months after their last release of the tools), one question for you all. Will you ever buy a Matrox card again?

NOPE! Get bent, Matrox!

[Admiral Horror]

Absolutely not and I'll advise everyone I know against doing that as well. I think a move like that (not providing Win2k support) should not go unpunished.

Moreover I don't understand why it was possible to write Video Tools for the WinNT and not for Win2k. They should at least be able to get the same amount of functionality under Win2k. With all the support for DirectX8 and other multimedia enhancements that Win2k has to offer they should be able to write Video Tools 10 times better than for WinNT.

My next card of choice will be ASUS V7100 Deluxe Combo. It has a functional capture driver and TwinView support under Win2k, even though for now you can only use one at a time.

[AndrewDV]

The answer is still not definite. For all we know, Matrox is about to release them today.

However, IF they do decide not to release updated Win2k vt's/vid tools; I would avoid their products.

{rant}

How important is the home user? How important is repeat business?

They would have to win users over again. Remember the days of the Millenium being paired with a Righteous 3D? You could not find either of those cards. For games, they seemed to have riden that too long. Others passed them by as they remained in a conservative approach. As a result, Matrox does not have much of gaming solution.

As with gaming, their focus for video editing has definitely shifted out of the home user. As great as the RT series is, it definitley is not affordable. With a new set of issues coming from the eTV realm, one has to wonder where that is going. Simple TV tuner cards paired with 3rd party software provide excellent results for the home (including a remote).

What Matrox needed to do was turn the Marvel G400 into the ultimate home editing/entertainment setup. They could improve on the hardware while adding a better software suite/drivers. Just adding hardware MPEG playback support would have been a welcome addition. Adding Dolby support, yuy2, etc are all items they have the skills for.

{/rant}

With that said, I still want those vt's! I'm not giving up yet!

[This message has been edited by AndrewDV (edited 30 May 2001).]

[IM_Riktar]

I am frustrated, but as before I will wait and see. Since I am not much of a gamer the video stuff is my whole issue.

Hey Doc Mordrid,, you have sure been "quiet" through all this. I don't suppose you could shed some light on this whole mess?

[Dr Mordrid]

You haven't heard much from me because I'm a** deep in 4 consecutive betas right now.

That little blurb on the driver graph was news to me too.

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Matrox would join ATI on my don't buy list :-(

My only exception will be OEM G450 boards because they are only ~$65 and provide unique capabilities for W2K that works well with the existing drivers.

--wally.


[This message has been edited by wkulecz (edited 30 May 2001).]

[Ant]

I've just had a response from the Matrox PR people. They say they are currently in discussions with Matrox Technical Marketing to decide what level of support they will offer and when. As it was stated that the VTs would be released by the end of May which has not yet come around they have not prepared any sort of official statement on this subject, maybe by sometime next week.

[Ansigod]

I'm really scared that next weeks announcement might go something like "We've decided to abandon our Win2k videophiles altogether" or "We were shooting for the end of May, but with all our other projects we're working on, you'll have to settle for the end of November. At least you're getting your fscking drivers!"

Unless we're getting our VTs this week, it looks like even if we get drivers at all, we'll have all jumped ship.

This is a scary sequence of events.

[BryceMan]

See here for my opinion:

http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/006407.html

Not like I expect you to care... ;-)

[mikiem]

Hi Folks

For what it's worth, think that the Matrox *powers that be* have gotten a bit confused when it comes to customer support.

When it comes to a straight up graphics cards, I've got boxes of 'em, all suffering early retirement due to zippo driver support. Thankfully (from a revenge minded perspective), most of those companies are now out of business.

Matrox may figure on saving a few bucks today, but not learning the obvious lessons from all those who've passed before may be in effect reserving some not so nice coffin space... ESPECIALLY (I do realize this may be heresy) since their pure graphics cards lag behind something I can pick up from IO Magic & similar!

Now when you get into the video end of things, even at the hobby level you're talking about a fair investment putting together a system that works. The mindset is not one of tossing equipment once a year.

Those people that are into video are not stupid, by any means... I have little doubt that *IF* Matrox screws faithful users at any level, it will impact sales across all levels. For example, who would consider popping for an RT versus the more then capable competition when it looks like Matrox is in trouble & abandoning loyal customers.

Myself, I'm responsible for a few sites & a small amount of equipment. If it turns out Matrox does abandon it's customers, I won't kid myself about how much effect I could ever have, but as a matter of principle, I will detour every dollar I can that's headed towards their bank accounts.

[Dr Mordrid]

This is a repeat of my post on another thread, but it belongs here too. That said this is MY personal analysis of the situation and not Matrox's:

===========================================

If you carefully read Haigs note you'll get the implication that the problem is with Zorans HARDWARE MJPeg and Windows2000 themselves.

1. The Zoran MJPeg chip on these cards was designed for Video for Windows. VfW is only supported in Win2K by way of a WDM-to-VfW translation layer, and this layer doesn't work properly. It didn't work in Win98, it was kinda fixed in Win98SE and has been broke in Win2K since day one as regards analog video capture.

2. Therefore, in order to develop a working set of drivers for the Zoran MJPeg chipset win2K you have to develop a DirectShow filter for it. This is far different than WinNT drivers which use Win9x style Video for Windows and not Win2K's DirectShow, so that comparison is not valid.

3. Zoran doesn't support their product very well since they do not offer a DirectShow SDK for Win2K, which means Matrox was stuck trying to reverse engineer one themselves that would work with their hardware. Obviously it didn't work.

Fortunately the most potentially useful feature will be there in the Win2K drivers: native YUY2 capture support. This will allow any manner of soft MJPeg (or most other codecs) to be used.

To be honest about it I haven't used the Matrox hardware MJPeg for anything but betaing in many months.

YUY2 + PICVideo MJPeg delivers better results anyhow since it can do higher data rates. YUY2 + HuffYUV gives small enough files to capture on a single hard drive and encodes to very nice MPEG's in MSPro6 + the DVD Plugin. Add NTFS and you're set.

===========================================

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 May 2001).]

[gibverse]

Will I ever buy a Matrox card again? Probably yes, I love my Millennium G400.

Will I ever buy a Matrox capture product again? HIGHLY unlikely.

Having waited for NT 4 drivers for my G200 Marvel, and now Win2K for my RR-G, I really wasn't surprised by this. I have been saying don't bother with the MJPEG for a while now, too bad Matrox didn't listen :-)

As for all of those of you are pissed about this: http://www.hauppauge.com

Looks like Matrox is joining the other big Canadian video card maker in the fact that they can't handle decent support for their entry-level capture boards.

Thanks to Haig, Ant and Chris for keeping us up to speed on this.

John

[gibverse]

To Doc:
Actually, as I read Haig's post, those of us with RR-G's are getting stuck with RGB only. Hopefully there will be some sort of YUY2 hack again, but who knows… don't see how hard it would be to put in. If Matrox wasted all this time trying to get the Zoran working, you think they could make a simple option like Flying Dutchman has provided us.

John

[This_Idiot]

John,

I really wouldn't rule anything out for the time being. Matrox Marketing and TS aren't talking the same language for a start (well that's news, innit ?). FD hasn't had time to even consider the implications, let alone plan his own development schedule - and this would be highly dependent on what Matrox actually produce in the way of capture drivers/tools (which currently look to be around 3 weeks off).

I haven't had chance to talk to Haig about all this yet, by the time I'd found out about it (like the majority of you), He was heading out of town through the rush hour (or whatever it's called in North America). I'm hoping to get some of his time tomorrow, but bearing in mind the extra pressure that his team is likely to be under and the number of requests for info he's likely to get, I don't know how far I'll get. Let's put it this way, if I was running the response team over there at the moment, I'd be filing all RFI's for processing sometime in the autumn and concentrating on today's issues like upgrading the teams capability on responding to calls on soft compression (I'd hazard a guess that eTV isn't taking up more than 10% of their time currently).

Never fear, we'll try to bring you the latest as soon as it unfurls. I'd be really grateful if FD would drop me an email with his own perspective.

[wkulecz]

Doc you keep saying this about w2k and broken VfW-WDM layer.

Please explain why Hauppauge's VfW drivers seem to do OK?

--wally.