Matrox's Extio Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Matrox isn't as dead as some of us thought. This box of tricks lets you connect four displays up to a PC that's 250 meters away. All the graphic data is sent down a fiber optic cable to the Matrox box that then connects to the screens. To the end user it feels like they're working directly on the PC, but the PC can be locked away somewhere safe."

Matrox never went away

[_merlin]

Matrox never went away completely - they just left the consumer market. They still sell cipsets for connecting very large numbers of monitors to computers. Dual-head is nothing to them - they do eight- and even sixteen-head chipsets. They don't handle games well, but it you just want lots of displays...

This product doesn't look suited to the consumer market, either. It looks like a solution for airport terminals or something - hide away a PC with one of their multi-head video cards and use this to carry the video to where you want people to see it.

Re:Matrox never went away

[Anonymous Coward]

They are in the "Industrial Market", machine vision, etc.
I see their ads in Advanced Imaging Magazine all the time.
http://www.advancedimagingpro.com/ [advancedimagingpro.com]

Re:Interesting idea but nonstandard

[paimin]

I was hoping to read about a new standard monitor connection that replaces DVI (and HDMI) with fiber.

That already exists [practical-...-guide.com].

Didn't I see this in...

[jimmydevice]

I thought IBM did this back in 1970 with twinax. I know I did this with coax for a good 500 feet in 1998 (it was a demo at a airport). Why is this news and why would you need to do this now? Is display hardware, wireless or local fiber networking that expensive that you need to buy a 10 year old solution to solve your ill planned design?

Re:Matrox never went away

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only did they exit the consumer market, it seems they want to pretend it never even happened. They closed their developers relations scheme and removed all their previously available documentation. They stopped releasing Open drivers for anything after the G450: there wern't many cards after that admittedly, but a few diehards apparently did buy a Parhallia. Matrox always had brilliant 2D performance and great picture quality, but that's not enough these days of course. They never really could compete in the consumer 3D range, so they've gone for the high-end imaging markets instead and seem to be doing quite well. Good for them I guess, but still..it would have been nice to have a another option for Open Source users. Don't blame 'em though. There's no money in it.

From the article

[lewko]

Recording studios for example could use high powered PCs without having to put up with the constant drone of cooling fans - an Extio installation would give you all the power of a high-end workstation, while the noisy hardware whirs away in a soundproof room in another part of the building.

As opposed to say putting the artists in a soundproof room, and the recording and PC gear in a control room.

Other solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

There are wireless KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) units that allow you to keep your computer at a distance. Just stash all your nosiy computers in one room and have the NOISY KEYBOARD AND CLICKY-CLICKY MOUSE beside a neat little KVM transceiver.

Re:Optical Elegance

[Jbcarpen]

You're right, but for the wrong reason.

I wonder, if one were to send a one minute stream of uncompressed video data, would more photons be required for the transmission over the fiber, or in the final display to the user/viewer?

Given that, I would have to say that while the difference is still going to be several orders of magnitude, it won't be for the reason you stated. Rather, it will be because fiber is VERY focused and as such can get away with much lower levels of light, a display on the other hand, needs to spray photons in every direction. 1/r^2 light dissipation gets huge really quickly.

I've seen these in action

[ArhcAngel]

I support an energy trade floor and got to demo the beta of the Extio over a year ago. We currently have a mixed environment where every trader has a laptop and a blade [clearcube.com] that resides in our server room. The big plus for us with this device is it turned the laptops into 4 monitor blades because you can connect to it via an expresscard slot. I can say that the blades which push an Nvidia Quadro over cat5 is always washed out whereas the Extio looked very crisp and clear.