Matrox's Extio Reviewed 204
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."
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:5, Interesting)
These would be so cool for demonstrations and conventions.
I wonder how many of these cards you could fit in a single computer ?
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... one.
Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:5, Interesting)
This was initially done for security reasons, and the first KVM Extenders we had couldn't forward sound or USB, but nowadays it's not a problem at all, and it's all done over cat5 cables.
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Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the people carrying laptops really going to wait for the poor "server room" person to carry their laptops in and hook them up?
After all he did say it's "for security reasons".
I'd just let people use their laptops wherever they are on a separate network, turn on various security stuff on the switches etc.
Plus if I were in Sales or some other not-IT dept, I wouldn't even want me or stuff assigned to me to have been in the server room and risk even being blamed for bad stuff happening in the server room.
Imagine if the Sony batteries in a laptop blew up while it was in the server room.
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Was just pointing out that KVM has a similar solution which I've been using for many years and I think it works great.
By the way, since you are talking about networks, the setup is act
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Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score:4, Funny)
Math problem nightmare (Score:5, Funny)
Uhm... (Score:5, Funny)
When was Matrox dead ffs? When Seagate bought them, they were one of the top HDD brands (well, for commodity OEM drives, if not known for amazing quality).
The fact that half of Matrox's utilities are producing Seagate brand drives doesn't make them dead, does it.
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Yea, laugh at me
"He mixed up Maxtor with Matrox. Idiot!"
I deserve it.
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, mod GP so that more people can laugh at him! Anyway, what's a Men's magazine doing producing fibre-optic monitor extenders?
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Funny)
Silly me, I was sitting here wondering if he meant the first Maxtor, Reloaded, or Revolution...
-l
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And it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
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Mmmm. Prawns.
Wait a minute... I don't like prawns....
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Matrox never went away (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I see their ads in Advanced Imaging Magazine all the time.
http://www.advancedimagingpro.com/ [advancedimagingpro.com]
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How do you link to dead trees? I'd be more interested in that than a rmote 4-display setup (written from a 3-display linux box using plain agp and pci cards at 1/10 the price of matrox's solution).
Yes, its nice. No,its too darned expensive. And I'm sure the mac-head in the next cubbie at work, who is stuck using a dual-monitor setup under Windows, would miss the chance to kick his box every time it stops working (several times a day - Windows video editing sucks in comparison to a Mac - or so he says ...)
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Indeed, the article quotes the price to be as reviewed £1,645.00 (Inc VAT). That's a chunk of change, to be sure.
My own solution (to cut a hole through two adjoining rooms) produces similar results, but is far less elegant. I'd be interested in such a device. Or, put another way, it may be that the limited consumer market includes people concerned about noise, clutter and peace of mind (like me), in addition to any number of other subg
Mulihead good for schools. (Score:2)
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True , but removing all documentation however does seem like a case of taking all their toys and going home in a huff. Perhaps not the most mature course of action.
Re:Matrox never went away (Score:4, Insightful)
Kidding aside, I left Matrox after G450, they knew they couldn't compete in the consumer-priced 3D market (nVidia just spent too much money and ATI went chasing nVidia). It was sad to see them go.
They seem to know their market, it's just not you that's in it.
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And their closed drivers were awful. Especially their pitiful attempts at producing 2k/XP drivers. They left any customers unfortunate enough to purchase their G400-TV vidcap card (yeah, I was one of 'em) high and dry w/ no capture support in 2k/XP with little more than a "sorry, we give up. The zoran chip we charged you out the nose for is actually crap and you're better off without it anyway!" Don't even get me started on the OpenGL-Dire
That's good.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we got more than $1K of equipment sitting on the desk... (according to the price on the article)
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(Original article posted September 30 last year)
From the article (Score:3, Interesting)
As per parents parent, this devi
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Re:From the article (Score:4, Interesting)
Using a terminal, the data would still have to go from the server to the client to be displayed. For an MRI or somesuch device, this would be a huge amount of data, requiring the terminal to be quite powerful in itself (needing hard-drive and everything). Using this system, that is not necessary. I think any sysadmin will tell you that the fewer computers he/she has to admin, the better.
The application for this device is not crystal clear, a lot of the time a terminal would be an equally good (and probably cheaper) choice.
In my opinion, they will have a killer app if they can externalize the PCIE interface this way completely, allowing me to put any graphics card in the box and thereby create a mini-game-system with a maxi-server elsewhere where it can make all the hard-drive and DVD-drive noises it likes.
Then again, isn't it the graphics card that makes the most noise these days? Maybe it's not as killer as I would like to think. :)
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Huge drawbacks of doing that with copper include the hardware not getting anywhere close to its advertised working distance with a real wo
Interesting idea but nonstandard (Score:2)
Instead Matrox has opted to move the graphics processor out of the computer, and use a (no doubt proprietary-format) optical link between the two.
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Didn't I see this in... (Score:4, Informative)
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I thought IBM did this back in 1970 with twinax.
What was the resolution on that twinax? Did it do 1920x1200 times 4 (source: product info page [matrox.com])? Have the equivalent of 6 USB 2.0 ports? Support digital sound transport? Work on commodity hardware?
Remote displays have been around for quite a while, but this is the modern incarnation of it. I'm not going to turn town a terabyte SATA drive just because I used a DEC with hard drives in the 70s.
Why is this news
Because most of us (myself included) didn't know that such a thing existed until we read this story.
and why would you need to do this now?
For
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There was no 'commodity hardware' in the seventies.
Exactly my point. You had to pony up some series cash to get into such a system back then.
You can find lots of stuff on multiple screens by just googling.
Multiple remote screens with all that functionality?
A dumb terminal replaces the Matrox hardware for much cheaper.
Lots of people don't want dumb terminals. They want nice fat systems for whatever reason. This gives them that option.
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Ill planned design? Sometimes it takes a less common solution to solve a problem. I don't know what the problem would be, but then, I am not well versed in problems that need unusual solutions. I think airports are one use though, if you think about it. I've seen video displays for departures and arrivals at airports out in the open, away from walls, and you can't really fit a computer there without
Optical Elegance (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:Optical Elegance (Score:5, Funny)
But, the real question is if these cables ran under water could we consider each packet a photon torpedo?
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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
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I'm struggling to see the difference between the two answers!?!
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From the article (Score:4, Informative)
As opposed to say putting the artists in a soundproof room, and the recording and PC gear in a control room.
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Re:From the article (Score:5, Funny)
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Would that be a dick in a box?
airport displays (Score:2)
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You could keep the display box in your server room and use a good server class machine for it. Redundant power supplies, ECC RAM, and RAID. Just put more than one card in the server and drive many displays with this gadget.
Need to upgrade the hardware? One box and it is in your server room.
Of course it gives you a single point of failure but with a good server class machine that isn't a terrible problem. And if you are really worried keep a spare..
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Like the article said... (Score:2)
Another interesting bit is that the actual graphics processor is in the Extio, not in the PC. This way rendering lag is minimized. Weird, yet cool.
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I'm not sure I understand this comment. The information is still going to have to travel (up to) 250 meters from CPU to display. What does it matter for lag where in that 250 meters the GPU sits? Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by "rendering lag"?
I work on commercial flight simulators. Lag as measured from control movement to video response is something the FAA has stand
Marketing department alive and kicking (Score:3, Insightful)
Consumer version, please!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what I'm pictuing: People spend tons of money to make their computer quiet and well-cooled. But if the thing lived in the cold basement, they could bolt in cheap gigantic fans and disturb noone. But here's the kicker: The basement computer would be a multi-user system, where all the users of the household (including, for example, the living room display) would be using the same system simultaneously. Their rooms would contain displays and input devices only, wired in by fiber. Even if that happens, they're unlikely to get in each others' way, since by then these things will have at least 16 processor cores for them to share. But it means that if a single user needs to do something processor-intensive, she'll have the power of a pretty serious 16-core machine behind her, while the kids browsing myspace from the same computer (but on a different display) won't even notice.
3D GPUs are also about to go seriously multicore, and resource division on those will be easier than it is with CPUs. So if there are two gamers in the house, they could share a powerful multicore card and get acceptable performance. But if only one of them is playing, he can hog the resources of all the cores, and turn everything up to eleven.
This paradigm of the basement computing appliance could revolutionize the way hardware is made and marketed. Multisocket motherboards for the mass market could easily become common, but I'm picturing also a system of arbitrary daughterboards with extra processing units, which will speed up the system without forcing the owner to scrap things. Sure it will become a giant lego-like mess that sounds like a jet, but that's OK. It's in the basement (and will by then hopefully have sane power management which will turn off absolutely every part of every chip which isn't being used).
My point is that normal households with multiple computers today duplicate a lot of resources which go wasted, since single user has the opportunity to use them all simultaneously. The way to fix that is to pool all the household's processing into a single, big, arbitrarily extensible machine which stays out of people's way. And for that, we need a good long-run digital video over fiber standard. And maybe, with all the excess heat these things will put off, they really could double as the hot water heater!
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Yay for the return of the mainframe!
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The only bad thing about this is the basement requirement... Where I live, most houses don't have basements, not to mention the people who live in apartments. So I wouldn't mind getting all that in a nice silent form fac
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Who's this "we"?
Rich
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When Timmy wants to play a game that requires the CD/DVD to be present in the machine, is he going to be willing to stomp down the stairs every time he wants to play? And how is Susie going to react when Timmy takes out the latest teeny-bopper movie she was watching in order to play Halo 8? Plus, when he fires up the game Daddy's Skype conference call with the important client on the other side of the world pauses at a critical
Try an external drive (Score:2)
While external DVD+-R drives are in the $60-70 range right now (compared to $30-40 for internal), there's no reason why they couldn't drop to be just a dollar or two more than an internal drive if demand increased, since there's not a whole lot of extra hardware necessary. Readers for many other types of media (especially flash cards) are only just now being built in to computers, and are more commonly used in read
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Misspelling (Score:2)
You misspelled that last word. It should be q-u-i-e-t.
Silent PC users rejoice (Score:3, Interesting)
We have a friend who damaged her ear in an accident and simply can't tolerate any level of white noise or background humming. Her and her husband have gone so far as to build onto their house and concentrate all of the noisy appliances into the new section so that the rest of the house can be silent. When they visit our house, we unplug the refrigerator while they're around.
When I tell her husband about this, he will place an order within the hour. They've had a hard time getting a silent PC that's quiet enough (yes, her ear is really that damaged) but still reasonably nice, and I'm certain they'd rather have a high-end, powerful PC that can sit in the "noisy part" of the house and still be absolutely silent at her desk.
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That sounds more like brain damage
It could be. As I said to another poster, although we're friends, we're not extremely close. At least, we're not close enough that I'd feel comfortable asking about the distinction.
However, I was shot in the ear by a paintball gun once. The ball basically formed a perfect seal with the hole, and I honestly thought I was dying at first. It was agonizing. Once I was able to walk without throwing up, the pain gradually decreased and mostly went away. I saw a doctor shortly after and he said that it d
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They have small kids around the house and other reasons why she would want to hear everything, but without the random background noises most of the rest of us don't notice anymore. They live in the country so they don't have to deal with road noise, etc., so it's probably easier for them to adapt their environment to her than vice versa.
I don't know how she deals with planes and so on, having never travelled with them. While we're friends, we're not extremely close so I haven't asked for all the details
Google for "KVM extender" (Score:2)
Nope. This gadget isn't so you can "hide the PC", it's for something else. Public information displays stuff like that...
I've seen these in action (Score:4, Informative)
MythTV? (Score:2)
ImageWorks had this years ago (Score:2)
Good for Clean Rooms (Score:2)
With one of these, you've still got the keyboard/monitor, but you can get sealed keyboards and LCD monitors fairly easily, while sealed PCs are a lot harder to come by.
i had a similar requirement (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well:
Le
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Rich
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I can imagine 7 foot basketball super stars snapping these things up, and Paris Hilton can afford to buy at least two whole entire units.
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Just make sure you connect that power led. I forgot it, and that's a s
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Been there and done that.
I've replaced the heatsinks and fans on every system I've ever owned. I've built and made use of, with varying degrees of success, soundproof enclosures. I own a number of VIA fanless systems (some with 2.5" drives) and two Soekris boxes -- they all make noise. Betcha ya didn't know that monitors (CRT or LCD) make noise? If I could get
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Aside of that, I've built crates with a noise output under 20 dB. It is actually possible to get under the hearing threshold (though the cost usually doesn't warrant it).
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Re:Other solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
This unit is designed and PERFECT for financial "turrets" where traders have up to four screens on their desk at one time... This solution allows them to get the computer hardware out of the turret, allowing them to pack more traders in a given space.
This isn't for the home market, even the home "enthusiast" market, nor even the insane, "gotta have it" home market - this is for certain users with very specific needs where cost isn't really an object...
As for the price, this unit includes the four port video card, that helps explain some of the cost (for example this [provantage.com] Matrox card is $750 and provides 4 video outputs...
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This unit is a video display extension unit with high bandwidth (4x 1,920 x 1,200 DVI), keyboard extension with audio and USB. It is all carried over fiber, to a breakout card that install in the PC. This unit IS the video card, and the fiber extends the PCIe 1x motherboard connection out to the remote unit, along with PC connections.
Also, I've only seen two display KVM