Area selectable DualHead HW zoom ala Matrox?

[BrainStove]

WTF, I?ve been wondering ages ago why the hell any of the two major players in the videocards Biz (ATI & Nvidia) has not yet implemented this extremely useful feature into their videocards DualHead Technology.
Does this mean that Matrox is the only owner of a wide, very well documented and pretty hermetic/aggressive patent keeping away to their competitors from using, emulate or even mimic it?

I can?t believe "Area selectable DualHead HW zoom" should be Matrox?s exclusive bitch, implying they are not willing to yield, sell or share this tremendously useful (specially for VJs) DualHead feature with anyone else.

So, rant away; I?m all ears for every sort of ideas & Logical speculation/explanation about WTF is going on.:banghead:

[sleepytom]

firstly the matrox zoom never actually worked properly (ie very slow and underscanned)

secondly the matrox zoom function exists in a slightly different but equally useless format in nvidia nview.

i have managed with some faffing to get my nvidia tvout to display just a 768x576 output window cropped out of my main 1280x1024 desktop - this worked with proper overscan and looked pretty good - but it was a pain to setup and was not really storable in any of the preset configs.

this is my main objection to TVout - it simply isn't designed for pro use - the settings are very volitile and nobody has developed a sencible preset save / recall system that works reliably.

also the very poor video signal that comes out of a lot of tvouts is never helpfull - often it will just look a bit shitty - somethines it will be completly out of range and cause all kinds of errors when put into a video mixer.

one day i'll get round to putting a vectorscope on my tvout and my scanconverter - i'm willing to put money on the scanconverter having a considerably better output.

[BrainStove]

Well Tom, I guess it?s been a loooong while since you last used matrox?s "area selectable zoom" feature then, cuz it never was easier to setup, save/recall the presets & of course according my experiences always delivering a proper Overscan crystal clear great video output whether it be VGA or NTSC-TVout thru the provided dongle.

You even could use your ProGrade scanconverter plugging it in the secondary VGA connector on Matrox cards and enhance/improve the TVout quality if you want Tom, but the point here is; I suspect this exclusive kickass "area selectable zoom" Matrox dualhead feature must have something to do with a very clever approach, well written software & an exclusively patented way to code their drivers to get advantage of their dualhead videocards models.

This looks to me like ANY dualhead capable videocard/chipset technology indifferently it be Ati, Nvidia, whatevah, should be able to implement the ASZ feature in theirs videocards, but it?s just a very well described and pretty solid technology patent Matrox is holding which prevents their competitors from using it without pay royalties.

Is there any possibility I am right on this speculation?

[elbows]

I dont know what the patent situation is, but I would put Matrox's ability to do really good 2D graphics technology in the past as being down to their background as a company. They have an industrial imaging division and have been around for 25 years.

[murk]

Yep, the first real video card I ever bought was the Matrox 450 eTV for $220 USD. It had features I had never seen before. The zoom feature does overscan almost perfectly and has a digital smoothing option to reduce pixelation. But the 3D stuff was half assed and slow.

Patenting may be one reason the other big guys don't do the zoom, but it could also be that your average consumer has no need for such features. And I would imagine that there would be additional hardware and software develpment and maintenance costs for such frivolous features.

[BrainStove]

Well, actually not so frivolous feature at all Murk, I?ve heard Tons of Gamerz ppl (main ATI?s/Nvidia?s consumer market) asking & begging for such dualhead ASZ capability simply to be able to output full screen on 2nd display a partial zoomed section (Game maps, control panels, statistics, etc) of the main/first Game display/desktop where all the action occur just to get an appreciative readable advantage over the tiny & fuzzy control options available on the main game screen only.

Therefore I guess ATI & Nvidia are not willing to deny to their biggest customer base of such a simple dualhead feature unless they are really unhibited by patent issues, however I agree with you about the additional efforts & costs involved in the development & maintenance of a parallel ASZ technology from scratch just to please their customers and accomplish the goal. ;)

Keep bringing new ideas peepz, maybe we all together can decypher the enigma sooner or at least if ATI/Nvidia?s fat fishes are reading this... we may get the goodies sooner too. :yep: