Matrox RT.X2 unboxing

[Andrew Smith]

Here's a detail shot of the video and audio I/O block, affectionately referred to as the squid head. This gave you your composite and component analogue inputs as well as that exciting HDV direct digital input thing called a Firewire interface.

But what of the S-VIDEO connections we were possibly more likely to use?

[Andrew Smith]

S-VIDEO came via these handy adaptors.

Notice the white plastic labelling on the main trunk of these adaptors? Burning to know what it says on the other side? Well, here it is. "Made in China." That's right, nothing is sacred, no matter how much you paid.

Thus endeth the unboxing.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the unsolicited shout out! Brings back a lot of memories, amazing piece of hardware for sure. Better realtime than we get now even on the fastest machines. Edited a LOT of multi-cam weddings, dance recitals and plays with that hardware and some corporate as well. Even worked the Matrox booth at NAB one year doing demos.

Before that, it was the Matrox RT.X100 for realtime DV editing, and I also used the Canopus DV Storm hardware way back. And who can forget the Pinnacle Miro DC30? Ah, the good old days!

I also got to use a DPS Velocity 3D system for a few years when I was a beta tester. That was like 20 years ago now....and prior to that, one of the first prosumer I/O cards was the DPS Spark in the late 90s (though not realtime). Yes, pretty much used them all at one time or another.

Hang onto those S-Video adapters, those are hard to come by (people do still need them for use with other more current I/O boards from other vendors).

Matrox really had a good thing going while it lasted.

Thanks again for sharing

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Andrew Smith]

Hey Jeff,

As it turns out, those Y connectors are the very things I will be keeping.

Yes, it was a great/awesome/interesting time in tech that I doubt will ever be repeated. Wonderful days once you forget such things as how we used to sweat over stuff like dropped frames during a capture. ;-)

Andrew

[David Banner]

Thanks for sharing. I remember the RT.X2. Considered buying one. I had the RT.X100 and used it a ton. A ton. Still have that workstation, actually, complete with the *cough* powerhouse matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB graphic card and whopping 4GB RAM windows XP and 10,000rpm drives.

I still miss some of those Matrox effects and capabilities. I probably most miss some of the transitions. On my later workstations have quadro and gtx GPUs, loads of RAM and tons of software plugins, yet still never have been able to fully replace some of what my RTX could do.
I also own a couple Matrox MX02 mini w/maxand love them too, though they can't do as much as the RTX could.

Matrox has since gotten out of graphics cards and NLE cards to focus in streaming, I believe. I really liked their products.

[David Banner]

Now that you unboxed it, what are you going to do with it? Harder to sell now

[David Banner]

I wasn't aware they did that at end of life at the final release. That is really cool.

When we made the transition from sd to HD I almost again bought the rt.x2 and running cs4 without the update that shut off the real time matrox stuff. But my workstation didn't have the needed slot type so I would had to have bought a new workstation which wasn't a possibility then. So I ended up upgrading my other workstation (Mac Pro) to run cs5 with a quadro.

Thinking back, matrox was a serious player back then and before that. I remember almost buying an rt 2500 and before that the....RT...can't remember the name now... Required certain hardware and it did all the processing as opposed to how the later RT.x100 shared processing with the CPU doing some. What was that called?

[David Banner]

As much as I disliked tape, I miss those days. Matrox gave you an edge over the competition and speaking of competition... It was nothing like today. Dozens upon dozens of people in my area doing video now. Not like that back then...
Now the field has tanked with dirt cheap rates.

[Andrew Smith]

Originally Posted by David Banner

Now that you unboxed it, what are you going to do with it? Harder to sell now

ROFL. Impossible to sell in good conscience as you couldn't even buy a motherboard these days with the correct slot type for the card to work. It's well and truly past its lifespan.

I had been wanting to build a computer around this card, but before that happened the MXO2 product came out and I made the hard decision to jump to this and build a new system around the very latest from Matrox, which in turn effectively meant writing off the money spent on purchasing the RT.X2 card.

I just took a look around for the RT.X2 price and from what I can work out it was $2500 AUD. Ouch (sniff).

Andrew

[Steven Digges]

Another former Matrox user here. Started with the RX and finished with the 2000. Yes I thought is was amazing how they transformed a decent computer into a magical NLE. Somewhere I probably still have a disc that that says Adobe Premier on it with no "pro or version #" on it. Been using Premier through every version since then.

Your post reminded me how much I miss firewire. It flat out worked, and it worked bidirectionally with everything. Computers, cameras, hard drives etc. Then we went backwards and have not had anything that works like that since then.

Also, it is worth noting that for many of us Matrox users DVINFO was a place you had to be. This is where you found the answer to every question you could possibly have about using or building such a system. There were a ton of us who supported each other in those not so perfect but exciting times.

Yep....your not a "Pro" unless you have hit a capture button and sat back with a beverage and watched your computer take over your Canon XL1 and magically transfer your video from tape onto a hard drive! HaHa.

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Donald McPherson]

I started with the Pinnacle card and breakout box. Came with Premiere 6.5