The DualHead2Go: External Multi-Display Upgrade from Matrox.
by Josh Venning on November 25, 2005 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Final Words
The DualHead2Go is an interesting concept, but frankly, we can't help but think that it's going to be more or less useless for the average PC user. To its credit, the device does exactly what it claims to do without any problems, and the effect of the dual projection displays with Age of Empires 3 was quite impressive. However, using this for creating an extreme display setup for gaming, regardless of how great the idea sounds, is problematic.
First of all, the $169 (suggested retail) price tag is pretty hefty for something of this type, and chances are, people buying this to have a multi-display setup will also be dropping some extra cash on monitors as well. This alone is a minus, but if you want to use this setup for gaming, two monitors side-by-side won't really cut it. The big problem with having two monitors next to each other is obviously that your monitors will create a break in the middle of the display, and we just don't see this as being acceptable for gaming, especially for types of games like first-person shooters.
We've shown that using two projectors instead of monitors to achieve a seamless wide screen image works very well, and with this setup, the effect is truly stunning. Being able to play your favorite PC game on a 2560X1024 display projected against your wall is a scenario of pure gaming nirvana, and the idea will tantalize anyone. But the reality is that the money necessary to achieve this is extreme, and unless you are filthy rich, you won't be able to even entertain the notion of upgrading to this level. However, if you are able, then you should also be able to afford the dual link DVI version of the DualHead2Go (when/if it comes out), and the pricier projectors to run the higher resolutions that the box should then allow you to do. You would then have attained the holy grail of gaming displays and officially be the envy of all who know you.
Practically though, those who would ultimately benefit most from this device are business people with laptops who require multiple monitors for presentations or extra desktop space for applications. While we can think of a couple of different multi-display setups for this kind of thing, we couldn't imagine that they would be much more useful than a single display setup; at least not enough to warrant the high price of the DualHead2Go peripheral.
The bottom line is that there will be some people who absolutely must have this for business or other reasons, and those people will find the DualHead2Go useful. But for the average laptop owner, the price will probably be too high to justify doing whatever he/she would really like to do with it. And because, as we've said, most current desktop hardware already has support for multiple monitors, desktop users will have even less need for this box. Still, Matrox might be on to something here. For what it is, the DualHead2Go is nice, and certain applications have potential, but most will find this external multi-display upgrade impractical.
The DualHead2Go is an interesting concept, but frankly, we can't help but think that it's going to be more or less useless for the average PC user. To its credit, the device does exactly what it claims to do without any problems, and the effect of the dual projection displays with Age of Empires 3 was quite impressive. However, using this for creating an extreme display setup for gaming, regardless of how great the idea sounds, is problematic.
First of all, the $169 (suggested retail) price tag is pretty hefty for something of this type, and chances are, people buying this to have a multi-display setup will also be dropping some extra cash on monitors as well. This alone is a minus, but if you want to use this setup for gaming, two monitors side-by-side won't really cut it. The big problem with having two monitors next to each other is obviously that your monitors will create a break in the middle of the display, and we just don't see this as being acceptable for gaming, especially for types of games like first-person shooters.
We've shown that using two projectors instead of monitors to achieve a seamless wide screen image works very well, and with this setup, the effect is truly stunning. Being able to play your favorite PC game on a 2560X1024 display projected against your wall is a scenario of pure gaming nirvana, and the idea will tantalize anyone. But the reality is that the money necessary to achieve this is extreme, and unless you are filthy rich, you won't be able to even entertain the notion of upgrading to this level. However, if you are able, then you should also be able to afford the dual link DVI version of the DualHead2Go (when/if it comes out), and the pricier projectors to run the higher resolutions that the box should then allow you to do. You would then have attained the holy grail of gaming displays and officially be the envy of all who know you.
Practically though, those who would ultimately benefit most from this device are business people with laptops who require multiple monitors for presentations or extra desktop space for applications. While we can think of a couple of different multi-display setups for this kind of thing, we couldn't imagine that they would be much more useful than a single display setup; at least not enough to warrant the high price of the DualHead2Go peripheral.
The bottom line is that there will be some people who absolutely must have this for business or other reasons, and those people will find the DualHead2Go useful. But for the average laptop owner, the price will probably be too high to justify doing whatever he/she would really like to do with it. And because, as we've said, most current desktop hardware already has support for multiple monitors, desktop users will have even less need for this box. Still, Matrox might be on to something here. For what it is, the DualHead2Go is nice, and certain applications have potential, but most will find this external multi-display upgrade impractical.
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DerekWilson - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
If the compatibility list isn't enough, Matrox has a tool here:http://matrox.com/graphics/offhome/dh2go/try.cfm">http://matrox.com/graphics/offhome/dh2go/try.cfm
Derek Wilson
Fluppeteer - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
This thing may be aimed at laptops (and they really ought to think abouta USB power adaptor for that market), but it's not a bad thing for
desktops, too. For laptops, assuming there's some decent hardware
acceleration on board, it's a valid alternative to a VTBook
(http://www.villagetronic.com/e_pr_vtbook.html)">http://www.villagetronic.com/e_pr_vtbook.html) or Sitecom's USB2/VGA
adaptor (or a compactflash VGA card plugged into a pcmcia adaptor...)
and it's a possible alternative to a Colorgraphic Xentera for getting
lots of screens on a desktop.
Matrox, ironically, don't seem to like the idea of plugging two in at
once - but I suspect that just confuses Powerdesk (Erwos - this is
Matrox's software for splitting the screen so that you don't have
problems with the border; only useful for desktop stuff, not games,
but would solve your concerns about how it's treated by Windows).
I don't see any reason why there should be a problem twinning them
otherwise.
I'm running four monitors here, using two PCI cards plus a dual-head
AGP card, and being able to use the AGP card for more than two of them
has some appeal. I'd like the idea of plugging two into an nVidia card
set to vertical span, and having one continuous 2560x2048 desktop (as
opposed to several display devices, from Windows' point of view) which
could be used for gaming - although with the borders in the way. They'd
have to be LCDs, though, or the refresh flicker would drive me nuts.
Presumably, in order for this to work, there must be a (double)
scanline-sized buffer in the device. Just to clarify an issue in the
article, EDID is transmitted from the display device to the graphics
card, not the other way around - so the DH2Go box will send an EDID
to the computer (showing it can do the wide screen modes), but not
to the monitors. I suspect the output mode options are standard VESA
timings, which the monitors will either cope with, or not - it'd take
more intelligence (and a full frame buffer) to handle arbitrary
monitor timings on the output.
To mirror what others have been saying (and there are rumours that
Matrox *are* working on a DVI version), what I'd really like to see
is a box with 256MB of video memory, a dual link DVI input (with the
latest card generation there are lots of people out there with dual
link DVI outputs which they can't use) and two dual link DVI outputs.
The decoder should be simpler if it's just a TMDS receiver (DVI-D).
If there was enough intelligence to decode the monitor EDIDs and
present a total resolution (at a range of timings) to the card, the
device could be a lot more flexible; an on-board frame buffer would
mean, e.g., dual 1920x1200 at single link would work, at reduced refresh,
and that uneven resolutions or refresh rates would work.
It'd bean relying on the highest resolution presented by the monitor's
EDID as being the native panel resolution (*usually* true, except in
one of Iiyama's recent devices), and might require extra intelligence
if analogue outputs were also wanted (probably set a lower refresh rate
limit, and pick a resolution accordingly...), but it could be much
more flexible. Stick a "horizontal/vertical" toggle on the back (*not*
some complex and flakey bit of software to do what a button does better)
and you could daisy-chain them to get a cheap and very large display with
lots of monitors (at low refresh) - hence my suggestion of 256MB rather
than anything much smaller; I'm not sure what the largest pixel count
in a single display is for various devices, but 8192^2 at 24bpp would
fit in 256MB. All it'd be doing is streaming pixels into and out of a
buffer (as fast as either end supports doing it), so the electronics
wouldn't otherwise be all that complex, even compared with the abilities
of your average video card's DACs/DVI outputs.
So the part cost would be up a bit over the "2Go" analogue version, but
I bet it'd sell otherwise. I'd buy one at $200. It might kill the sales
of Matrox's QID products, so unfortunately I doubt they'll do such a
flexible device (or if they do, they'll have to charge more than a third
the price of a QID), but I'm sure there's a market.
Making it all work with HDCP protection would be a bit more complicated,
but I'd be prepared to wait for version 2 for that. :-)
Still, fingers crossed. I'm a bit surprised that Matrox have a patent
pending on this - screen splitters aren't a particularly new idea,
even if I've not seen many products just yet. I hope this doesn't stop
someone else producing a DVI one, if Matrox don't.
--
Fluppeteer
DerekWilson - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
To clarify, when we wrote that the dh2g reports EDID to the "display device" we were talking about the graphics card not the monitor ...Fluppeteer - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
Ah, sorry Derek. I'd misread the paragraph talking about theEP1Cs and CH7301C-Ts as saying that the Chrontel chips were
responsible for the EDID rather than the Cyclone's being
responsible. My bad. "Display device" is an annoyingly ambiguous
term...
Given the high bandwidth of the AD9888 and the fact that many
modern graphics cards have 400MHz pixel clocks, it's a bit of
a shame that 1600x1200x2 (at, say, 75Hz with reduced horizontal
blanking, or standard VESA 60 and 70Hz timings) isn't supported.
It might not be so useful for some laptops, but it'd improve the
desktop situation for those of us with CRTs. Ah well, here's
hoping for the next version...
Big hand to Anandtech for pulling the device apart in such
detail, by the way. :-)
--
Fluppeteer
Fluppeteer - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
(Follow-up.)I mentioned a horizontal/vertical toggle. Come to think of it, for unequal
resolutions, it would be nice to have an alignment toggle too (left/top vs
right/bottom). Just to be complete. I'm presumining the missing areas of the
display would just be invisible (and the price for not using matched monitors),
rather than providing some complicated virtual desktop scheme or trying to
tell Windows about them. You could add "centred" to the alignment options,
but I doubt that's as common.
Now we just have to hope they make it. :-)
--
Fluppeteer
erwos - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
A DVI variant of this would be pretty slick.I also think that the forced stretching across both screens kills a lot of the device's utility. If they could figure out some sort of driver hack to treat it as two discrete monitors, that would make this infinitely more useful.
-Erwos
Donegrim - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
Not for games that don't support dual monitors. If a game thinks it's just one big screen, then it wont have any compatibility issues.DerekWilson - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
This is a key point - not many games support multiple displays.Even if a game does support multiple display devices, performance usually suffers greatly.
Since a 2560x1024 display requires about as many pixels as a 1920x1440 display, we can expect similar performance characteristics between the two modes (if the hardware doesn't have a problem with custom resolutions or aspect ratios).
Fluppeteer - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
I believe both ATi and (certainly) nVidia have modes whichpresent both heads on a single device to Windows as though
they were one monitor, which is better for gaming (but
arguably worse for general Windows use) than having Windows
running in "extend my desktop onto this monitor" mode.
This obviously has the problems:
1) The display is likely to be a funny shape which the game
may not support (unless you've got two portrait monitors), and
2) Assuming the monitors are matched, there'll be a bezel right
in the middle, where you want to see most.
However, combining the DH2Go with this feature gives two
options which are more appealing:
1) Use two DH2Go boxes and run four monitors, which is back to
your original aspect ratio (as I suggested in my longer post), and
2) Using one DH2Go box to present three monitors as a single
widescreen display, putting the centre of the action in the middle
of the centre monitor (like Matrox's triple head mode).
Your pick of whether 2560x2048 or 3840x1024 appeals more. :-)
(I run 3840x2400+2048x1536 at home and four horizontal monitors
at work, but not as one display surface.)
This little box is growing on me, as evidenced by how much I'm
posting about it. :-)
--
Fluppeteer
wien - Friday, November 25, 2005 - link
Soo.. What if I connect this thing to one of my monitor outputs, and another monitor to my other output. Could I in effect get a triple head system? That would be most excellent for driving- and flight-sims, or any other type of game really. Gaming with dual-head just doesn't work, unless the game is built with that in mind.