With Matrox's decision to cease all support and development of the MJPEG portion of my Rainbow Runner-G Series, I have jerked all the Matrox cards from my system.
W2K support of only RGB capture in the future was the last straw.
Let's review the Matrox cards and accessories I have owned and used.
Matrox Millennium PCI
Matrox Millennium II PCI
Matrox G200 AGP
Matrox TV-Out Addon
Matrox DVD Hardware addon (another awesome hardware product they ceased all support for)
Matrox Rainbow Runner-G Series
Matrox G400 AGP 32MB Dual Head.
The video cards have always provided rocksolid performance and made me a convert. However in the last two years Matrox has been slowly disallusioning me to future Matrox purchases.
First it was the fact that only the original release of the DVD Hardware addon software control was ever produced and very buggy at that. Fortuantely Bixler, Cods and others learned that the SoftDVD 3.5 and latter worked after you installed the Matrox Utility for much improved support. Then W2k, no possiblity for support.
Now it's my Rainbow Runner-G Series, W2K beta drivers for over a year with promises of a new VideoTools at the end of May. What? MJPEG support and development canceled across the board and the new VT's not available for another 3 weeks and only RGB capture at that.
After yanking out the Matrox material, I have purchased an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 32MB AGP card in combo with a 1394 firewire card. Increadible MPEG2/DVD playback that is hardware assisted with motion-compensation and other hardware assists. Crisp TV Tuner and the ability to capture directly to MPEG2. With my existing system it is recording MPEG2 video very well. Most importantly, rock solid W2K support out of the box.
I have been testing the card out for over a week and have been very pleased with my switch.
Sorry to say goodbye Matrox, it's been real.
:{
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Profound Runner
---- aka Willie -------
W2K support of only RGB capture in the future was the last straw.
Let's review the Matrox cards and accessories I have owned and used.
Matrox Millennium PCI
Matrox Millennium II PCI
Matrox G200 AGP
Matrox TV-Out Addon
Matrox DVD Hardware addon (another awesome hardware product they ceased all support for)
Matrox Rainbow Runner-G Series
Matrox G400 AGP 32MB Dual Head.
The video cards have always provided rocksolid performance and made me a convert. However in the last two years Matrox has been slowly disallusioning me to future Matrox purchases.
First it was the fact that only the original release of the DVD Hardware addon software control was ever produced and very buggy at that. Fortuantely Bixler, Cods and others learned that the SoftDVD 3.5 and latter worked after you installed the Matrox Utility for much improved support. Then W2k, no possiblity for support.
Now it's my Rainbow Runner-G Series, W2K beta drivers for over a year with promises of a new VideoTools at the end of May. What? MJPEG support and development canceled across the board and the new VT's not available for another 3 weeks and only RGB capture at that.
After yanking out the Matrox material, I have purchased an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 32MB AGP card in combo with a 1394 firewire card. Increadible MPEG2/DVD playback that is hardware assisted with motion-compensation and other hardware assists. Crisp TV Tuner and the ability to capture directly to MPEG2. With my existing system it is recording MPEG2 video very well. Most importantly, rock solid W2K support out of the box.
I have been testing the card out for over a week and have been very pleased with my switch.
Sorry to say goodbye Matrox, it's been real.
:{
------------------
Profound Runner
---- aka Willie -------
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