DMN by Kevin McAuliffe

I thought for the last article I'm writing on Media Composer 5, I would do something a little different.  Since Avid made the decision to support Matrox's MXO2 mini as a way for editors to monitor external video, I thought that I would do a review of it.

I have to say that I have never really been a fan of Matrox.  I have attended their product demos in the past, and just have never been overly impressed by any product they have released to date, and that's why when AVID stated that they supported the MXO2 mini to monitor external video, I was pretty surprised, as this is a big change of direction for AVID as they normally only support their own hardware for video monitoring.  Then, the kicker was I was approached by Matrox to take a look at the unit.  Well, as a writer, whatever preconceived notions I had of Matrox, or their products I put on the back burner, as I wanted to give the MXO2 mini a fair shake, as for the $449 price tag I really wanted (and hoped) it to work for the user bases sake.  Let's see how it fared.

WHAT YOU GET

With the MXO2 Mini, you get the unit itself and power supply (which came with universal adapters as well.  Bonus!), which let me point out is super light-weight (Less than a coffee mug).

You also get two Y/C (S-Video) cables, the host cable, PCI-e card for your CPU (either tower or laptop depending on your needs).  Now, for an extra $100 you can get yourself either the PCI-e card or PCI-e laptop adapter, whichever you didn't get with the unit to really make it an "on-the-go" monitoring solution.  read more...