No custom resolutions?

[thop]

i think marketing screwed up, the techguys must be pissed

[P5ycho]

indeed thop, i smell some serious parhelia board abuse on some marketing guys' heads...

[jonhart]

TOO hard for their driver developers.
Is the same reason that nVidia's twinhead is so crap under win2k ( but not so bad in win98 ).

I hope that once the focus on stable 3d, and then fast 3d has passed, they will get round to doing real triple head. Not only that, but they should be able to get it working with one digital and two analogue monitors as well.

[Haig]

i think marketing screwed up, the techguys must be pissed

We don't get pissed. We just sit back and say......

I sent Ant a clarification about the custom res debacle. I think he'll be around tomorrow to put it up.

[MadScot]

It must be a little frustrating, Haig. Well, I guess you do get to run the hardware that we still dream of... Hopefully, the rest of Matrox listens as well as you do!

Thanks!

MadScot

[Ryu Connor]

Truthfully this really does make the 3 monitor support only for surrouond gamming

Correct. That's exactly what TH was marketed.

This somewhat makes sense. It seems irregardless of whether or not triplehead was independent or stretched it would appear that it is hardware limited to 1280x1024 per monitor.

An aquaintence of mine makes use of CAD in his job and he has stated rather clearly that 1280x1024 per monitor is not enough resolution to warrant a third monitor (he doesn't game). I suspect what he wants is 1600x1200x32@85 across three monitors, which is probably not too far off. I disgress though.

The point being that while the resolution is perfectly adequate for gaming and perhaps for certain professionals, it will fall woefully short for others. I can see where the feature was always gamer targeted.

Of course Matrox's own marketing touts it as a professional solution.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia512/technology/triplehead.cfm

I didn't think Matrox was big enough for it's left and right hand to lose track of each other like this.

[xortam]

Haig ... I didn't see that you had posted here before I posted in your forums. The home theatre folks use custom resolutions for DVD playback via VGA output to various projectors (FPTV and RPTV) and direct-view TVs. Typically these are hi-def devices. They'll tweak the resolutions to meet their own specific needs so it would be nice to see a general customization capability versus a couple specific resolutions. They've used Powerstrip for this in the past but that utility doesn't support the Parhelia at this time. I'm currently in the wannabee camp so I'll leave it to the HTPC users to contact your sales department.

[Haig]

Thanks. Sales should get a good idea as to what the theatre people's needs are.

I talked to a few people from AVS and other than a few resolutions, they also want iDCT, which we don't have and the ability to tweak the res themselves.

Do you think many of these people would still go for a P if ONLY the res and the ability to tweak the res was available?

I'm just curious becuase I get the feeling that iDCT is the major decision factor for them and without this, then no matter what res's/tweak ability we give, it won't matter much to them.

[xortam]

Originally posted by Haig
... Do you think many of these people would still go for a P if ONLY the res and the ability to tweak the res was available?

I'm just curious becuase I get the feeling that iDCT is the major decision factor for them and without this, then no matter what res's/tweak ability we give, it won't matter much to them.

The AVS thread, "Parhelia first impressions, a personal opinion" has some good input on the pros and cons of the Parhelia currently in an HTPC application. I don't think iDCT is a show stopper for most of them because they would make sure they have adequate CPU power and high quality decoders. They do want to have flexibility over customized T&R (Timings and Resolutions). Many of them aren't overly price sensitive either. If I may quote a user on this AVS thread:

For some of us price doesn't really come into it, we just want the best. In a $15'000 plus HT a few hundred dollars is peanuts.

[piaxVirus]

The hardware iDCT can sometimes offers better image quality then the software decoders. So for those that must have the best picture, will still go with ATI. The ones that are fed up with buggy ATI drivers would most likely consider a P if the it had T&R.

I myself am not an AVS person yet, but I have a banding problem with my present Denon 3700 and I would like to see if computer DVD output would offer a better picture. I thought computer DVD was inferior to high priced consumer players. After reading the threads at AVSforum. I think times have changed.

For my desktop. I am a high res junky. I don't usually use the resolution tweaking, but I do use the timing tweaking. So I am a rare (head)case that could use T&Rs.

[prr]

Haig,
If I owned a video projector, that shows high quality VGA image, I most definitely wouldn’t buy a card that does not support the res projector is using.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by thop
i think marketing screwed up

Marketing guys nearly always screw up. Look what they did for Intel which allowed AMD to kick there ass.

[Ashley]

Custom resolutions isn't like iDCt - the latter is either there in hardware or its not. Any graphics card can do the former: the drivers just have to be designed for it.

Since Matrox has in fact done drivers with the ability to handle custom resolutions already, one can safely assume custom resolutions will be enabled/added to a forthcoming Parhelia driver release...

(Then again: the very first Kryro drivers for XP supported custom resolutions, but this was subsequently dropped because of what I presume were support issues.)

One thing many HTPC users always liked about the G-cards was their native support for interlacing (1080i), which NVidia has never supported and which ATI drivers do not handle proerly. I don't know if the Parhelia continues to support this. Anyone?

[Jon P. Inghram]

Great, sounds like Matrox is under complete control of the marketing department.

[Wombat]

No comment.