So i am about to pull the trigger on the Matrox MXO to monitor my DvcproHD work. I have a pretty basic question, is the Matrox video the same quality as the canvas preview? For example when i am working RT extreme mode where it lowers the quality of the canvas to playback realtime, does the matrox somehow make that quality up on output, or would i still need to render to see what it will look like?

Now that I ask the question, i think the answer is render, but I want to know for sure.

Randall,

MXO will playback according to the setting you have in the RT section, so If you wanna output the full quality, then you have to set it to high, but thing is the output of MXO is more than what you see from desktop display. It is actually full SMPTE 292M signal. It actually plays interlace which desktop monitor in the FCP won't allow, and let you do blue only color adjusting, too.