We've just updated our Matrox MXO2 FAQ to include additional information about the new MXO2 Mini and Matrox's MAX H.264 encoding acceleration technology.

What are the feature differences between the MXO2 and the new MXO2 Mini? (updated July, 2009)
The MXO2 is a broadcast/ professional HD I/O unit, designed for Apple Final Cut Studio editors who require SDI and XLR interfaces in addition to analog and HDMI support. It is also available as a Rack Mounted solution.

The MXO2 Mini is designed for the prosumer / event / corporate / independent videographer who requires HD I/O, but not SDI. The Mini has all of the great quality and cross conversion and up/down scaling capabilities of the MXO2. The analog and HDMI I/O is identical in quality to that of the more expensive MXO2. It simply lacks the broadcast / professional SDI and XLR I/O. The MXO2 Mini is also cross platform. It supports Final Cut Pro and the Final Cut Studio 2 applications on Mac, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and the Production Premium CS4 applications on Windows.

Here is a quick comparison chart we have put together for you. You can download a more detailed comparison chart (pdf) from the Matrox website.

What is MAX and why would I want the Matrox MXO2 with MAX? (updated July, 2009)
Encoding your HD video to H.264 gives you the very best possible quality video for  Blu-ray and Flash. Unfortunately H.264 encoding takes lots of time. The MXO2 family of products with MAX technology massively accelerate your H.264 encoding. 

How fast is it? Right now a fully loaded 8-core Mac Pro tower will take several hours to encode one hour of ProRes HD video to H.264 - with the Matrox Max it will take less then an hour! That's right faster then real-time encoding - even on a slower Mac.

Click here for the full MXO2 FAQ