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I'm looking at a 1.1Ghz Athlon, and lots of memory/disk space. Debian unstable will be used to power the whole thing. One thing I'd really like though is to be able to pipe the Cable TV into the box, and then also pipe the XFree Display out to my 60" TV. The idea being with the amount of HDD space I'm installing I should be able to pull off using my computer as a intellegent VCR. Plus it'll make Quake III just rock.

The Video Card I've been looking at is the Matrox G450eTV as discribed here : http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/marv_g450_etv/h ome.cfm .

Any experiences with doing TV signals under Linux (or even just URL's to places to check) would be appreciated.

Troll eBay looking for either an SGI 1600SW or a Radius Artica ($1500-$1900) - both are the same device: 1600x1024 resolution, wide screen, awesome image quality, uber geek. Only two cards that I know of drive it directly; the now defunct Number Nine Revolution IV or the current 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1-1600. Looks like Xi Graphics have decent X support for both. Otherwise you can get the SGI multi-link adapter ($495) that will take analog DB-15 or DVP/DVI digital inputs and drive it that way. Though, whatever you do, get 100% digital from video card to display. DVI is the current standard in the PeeCee world with support from Matrox, nVidia, ATI on the video card side and more flat panels are coming out that have a DVI-D connector (i.e. Philips 150P) - see Tom's Hardware for a good write up.

Matrox generally has good Linux support for their cards.

It's very hard to do if every problem I have with it is due to "someone else" and not Linux per se

Most drivers in Linux are writte by third-party people that are in no way affiliated with the hardware manufacturers. But in your case, I assumed you downloaded 3dfx' experimental drivers. I guess my assumption was right.

But I bet you are this dispassioned when you look at Windows - I bet you know to blame the drivers and not to blame the OS. Yeah, right.

Actually, no. If I download a new driver from the hardware manufacturer and that piece of hardware suddenly starts to behave strange or the machine hangs I would blame the hardware manufacturer for the buggy drivers. But if I use Microsofts own drivers for that hardware that comes with Windows, I'd blame Microsoft for the behavior of those drivers.

When I say there's no good X programs I mean no good X programs

But X was designed to be a Windowing System framework, not a desktop. I don't see what a lack of "pure" X programs is a drawback for X.

I think it's quite nice that you have your "desktop experience" split into several, independant parts. This way, you can switch desktop system without worrying about hardware compability and all those issues, if everything should be built into the same mess.

X isn't designed to be pretty or have lots of apps. It's designed to take care of the graphics hardware and the most primitive graphics operations.
In general, I think your reasoning is like a person who complains about a simple hammer not being able to cut down trees, fix the car, move the lawn and being available in all possible colors at the same time.

Mind you, if you're genuinely using the "network window" concept day-to-day I expect you're quite happy with lousy graphics performance.

Actually, it isn't that bad. The network speed is the crucial part and I'm only one hop away from school, and it's switched 10/100 Ethernet all tha way. Quite speedy. And I only use it for school work, not games or so, so the minimal decrease in performerance isn't a problem.
I also use the opposite - X-Chat isn't installed at school so I often ssh from school to my home box and use X-Chat from there. Not only does it work, it's pretty fast too. The only thing that is somewhat slow is switching between channel tabs - it takes a second or two for the window to refresh.

Nvidia is clearly the graphics chip maker to shoot for now, obviously.

What I _am_ concerned about is the proprietary infrastructure they've put in place in order to support Direct Rendering. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they aren't using the standard "stuff" that XFree provides but their own special infrastructue to support direct rendering. Their binary drivers have recently caught up in performance to its Windows cousin, but I'm always weary about having just binary only drivers. Want to upgrade to the newest kernel? Got the source? No problem! Binary only? You may have to wait for the vendor to release a version for that kernel...

As for my next system, I will purchase a Matrox G450 /w dualhead. They've even released driver source/binary to support dualhead, etc (link provided below)

One thing that seems too nebulous to review is the quality of tech support a company offers. As one of the many whom have been impressed by the active participation of their knowlegeable tech support people on their forum, my next purchase will be a Matrox product.

Some people are doing it !! Look at Digital Connections. They have info on Home Theatre PC's - what equipment to use etc. as well as tested home systems.
There is also talk about tweaking the G400 into displaying HDTV signals from DVD's. I have yet to find a card that exploits this, but according to the documentation on the GeForce2, it should be able to display in all HDTV modes (480p to 1080i)as well as record HDTV !!

Keep up the good work Precision Insight! These drivers are developed by Presicion Insight, and other than the HAL, what Matrox released is more or less what's already available at DRI's CVS.

Nevertheless, Matrox is to praise for releasing specifications that allowed people to write drivers for their hardware, including but not limited to the Utah GLX drivers, as well as for releasing source code (not all of it, mind you, but information comming reliable sources suggests it will be there eventually) along with this "beta" driver. So, go, Matrox, go!

Keep up the good work Precision Insight! These drivers are developed by Presicion Insight, and other than the HAL, what Matrox released is more or less what's already available at DRI's CVS.

Nevertheless, Matrox is to praise for releasing specifications that allowed people to write drivers for their hardware, including but not limited to the Utah GLX drivers, as well as for releasing source code (not all of it, mind you, but information comming reliable sources suggests it will be there eventually) along with this "beta" driver. So, go, Matrox, go!

/per

Still, you do need to make sure you have compatible video cards.

Some manufacturers (matrox for example)are putting out cards that will drive multiple monitors from a single board. I think that makes the most sense. The thought of trying to persuade boards from different manufacturers to harmoniously coexist gives me acid flashbacks to the early days of the PC. Been there, done that, ain't goin' back.

Go to Matrox's website to get more details.

Ace's hardware has an article on the newly announced Matrox G450. Unfortunately, it looks like a more evolutionary step from the G400, and not a true contender against the big guns from 3dfx and nVidia.

Ace's hardware has an article on the newly announced Matrox G450. Unfortunately, it looks like a more evolutionary step from the G400, and not a true contender against the big guns from 3dfx and nVidia.

Matrox is dealing big time in Macintosh ware these days. Apple has gotten together with Matrox to build a very powerful Real-Time DV card for the G4. Today's press release detail some of the more salient points.

Matrox and Apple Announce Real-Time DV Editing for the Mac

NAB 2000 Convention

Matrox Video

NAB2000, LAS VEGAS--April 10, 2000--Matrox Video Products Group and Apple® today announced the first PCI video card for real-time digital video (DV) editing on the Macintosh®. The RTMac, architected by Matrox and Apple engineers, is tightly integrated with Apple's award-winning Final Cut Pro(TM) video creation software to provide real-time editing, effects and compositing. Fully configured systems are expected to start at under $5,000

There is also a rumor that Matrox may replace ATI as Apple's video card supplier.

And Matrox today announced a Real-Time DV Editing PCI card for the Macinotosh G4. Here's that press release.

And then Pinnacle Systems and Apple announced they are bring Uncompressed High-Definition Video to the Mac. Here's that press release.

Matrox *still* has some work to do on it's OpenGL drivers: they released some that work for most games (mostly I'm interested in Tribes) but it's a bit of a pain to upgrade to them.

The video capture itself is perfect. Mind you, I've got an Athlon 600 system. But full frame rate, full quality, no problem. The TV output is quite clear, and watching cable in a window takes no noticible CPU. Plus, DuelHead support, which is pretty cool but I haven't used it much yet.

The only reason that I wouldn't recommend it is if games are your top priority: like I said, Matrox makes really high performing video cards, but they are getting killed due to their poor driver support.(great hardware, weak software support). I haven't tried anything other than 2D under Linux yet, but that gives me as high a resolution as I'm looking for (1600 x 1200).

...the majority of their customers aren't computer geeks.

While the majority of computer users/owners around the world aren't computer geeks, many of them have friends who are computer geeks. Many of these technical illiterati ask their techno-friends for advice when deciding what to buy. I've seen it a thousand times.

In addition, some of us computer geeks are in positions where we buy hardware for our companies. Whenever I have to choose between two products of equal value to my business, I am heavily influenced by which product/vendor has done the better job of making me happy as a geek.

Right now, I've about had it with Aureal because they've been promising Linux drivers for their Vortex lines of sound cards since November of 1999. They even announced that they'd have Linux drivers in February of 2000. Now March of 2000 is nearly over and there's been no sign of drivers from Aureal and there's been no mention of when we might actually see their promised drivers.

I'm about to rip that piece of crap soundcard out of my computer and install a SoundBlaster Live because at least Creative Labs has some Linux support. The video cards in my desktop machines at home are Matrox and 3Dfx and both are well-supported. I don't think I'll be buying a GeForce DDR any time soon if nVidia can't release decent Linux drivers.

And no, I don't want to buy OSS drivers for that Aureal soundcard....

http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/arswards99- 2.html#vidcard

The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

The article says the thing has "Full AGP 2X/4X device with multi-threaded bus mastering and AGP texturing", but never talked about "multi-threaded bus mastering". I had no idea either, and was kinda dissapointed that they explained bump mapping with 3 pages and 4 pictures, but didn't say anything about this at all.

After poking around on matrox's site, I found only a breif PDF document. As far as I can tell it means the G400 can be told to DMA a vetrex list, command list, and textures, and stuff, and the G400 will decide which needs to be feteced next, and how much of it. Sounds useful, but I donno if it really is.

http://www. matrox.com/mga/press_room/lat_press_rel/matroxg400 _linux.htm

I think that in general Matrox cards are nice and generally robust...

And if the price is critical the older Matrox cards should by now be really cheap and it sounds like they might be adequate to your needs...

It may of course be hard to find any stores that still have those...

For example:
Matrox Mystique 220 does 1600x1200x24bpp
Matrox Millennium II does 1920x1080x24bpp

Even though these cards are old their 2D performance may be good enough...
But I guess you should check out the cards in action before you decide...

In the modern "sue-happy" world, you're free to sue whomever you please, but I would ask that you leave Zoran out of the cross-hairs. They have put up no roadblocks to supporting their hardware -- they gave LiVid the specs to the Vaddis III (zr36710) chip. Every other vendor [*] (that I know of) has refused to release anything. [The dxr2 driver was reverse engineered before Creative branded it theirs.]

Despite the unwillingness of Matrox to say anything about their DVD add-on (which uses the Vaddis III), significant progress has been made in supporting it. (That's all I've done on the weekends for last month or so.) There's still alot of work to be done, tho'. At this point, I'm not concerned with CSS as I'm working with unencrypted VOBs from a "DVD" screen saver that came with the drive -- "tiny", simple, and self-contained.

Eventually, DVD CCA will have to come to some agreement towards (non-windows) licensing of CSS. Should they refuse to allow non-windows (non-x86) playback, then there certainly will be a legal backlash -- anti-competitive, monopolistic, etc. I hope they are thinking about these things. Personally, I'd much rather the decoder hardware handle the CSS crap (read: waste of time.) As I understand, RPC-2 allows for CSS key transfers directly between the decoder and the drive so CSS then becomes almost nothing at all. (Of course, that maybe in reference to set-top hardware.)

In the modern "sue-happy" world, you're free to sue whomever you please, but I would ask that you leave Zoran out of the cross-hairs. They have put up no roadblocks to supporting their hardware -- they gave LiVid the specs to the Vaddis III (zr36710) chip. Every other vendor [*] (that I know of) has refused to release anything. [The dxr2 driver was reverse engineered before Creative branded it theirs.]

Despite the unwillingness of Matrox to say anything about their DVD add-on (which uses the Vaddis III), significant progress has been made in supporting it. (That's all I've done on the weekends for last month or so.) There's still alot of work to be done, tho'. At this point, I'm not concerned with CSS as I'm working with unencrypted VOBs from a "DVD" screen saver that came with the drive -- "tiny", simple, and self-contained.

Eventually, DVD CCA will have to come to some agreement towards (non-windows) licensing of CSS. Should they refuse to allow non-windows (non-x86) playback, then there certainly will be a legal backlash -- anti-competitive, monopolistic, etc. I hope they are thinking about these things. Personally, I'd much rather the decoder hardware handle the CSS crap (read: waste of time.) As I understand, RPC-2 allows for CSS key transfers directly between the decoder and the drive so CSS then becomes almost nothing at all. (Of course, that maybe in reference to set-top hardware.)

Nah. Matrox currently has the best linux hardware. Matrox G400 MAX. Nice. Jon Carmack likes 'em.

here

I've also heard that someone got documentation for the mpeg2 daughterboard matrox sells for the g100/200/400 graphics cards. They were going to write a driver for it, but I haven't heard anything since. I think there's supposed to be a website at livid.on.openprojects.net sometime soon, but there's nothing there as of this posting.

See also mpeg.openprojects.net for a what progress there's been on an open software decoder. Unfortunately, the MPEG2/DVD standard is pretty well tied up with patents (worse than mp3).

Finally, the original Berkeley group demonstration code is still available.

Okay, I am not a big fan of people complaining about moderation [fear what you hate, you may easily become it] but still. . . why??? I expressed an opionion and then gave some new information for people who didn't want to delve into the site. I found my info at http://www.matrox.com/ mga/g400/technical/glossary/feature2.htm, if someone thinks I am lieing. . .

Nice card but the drivers suck! I'm using the 2.10 drivers off their site which seem to keep everything pretty much in sync but every once in a while, it will just stop capturing video but keep going with the audio. For example, it will claim a 3 minute capture is only 10 fps. When I play it back, the audio will be fine but the video is 1/3 the normal speed. Right before 3 minutes in playback it will the video of what was going on at 1 minute in... Try the Ulead Video Capture. That seems to work better sometimes.

I setup a FAST DV Master for a customer once. Very nice card but slightly out of most price ranges... Kindof strange because it is a full-length PCI card! Matrox also has the DigiSuite card with an on-board Ultra2 scsi controller... Geeze.