Matrox Marvel G400 TV

The Matrox Marvel G400-TV is designed as an 'all-in-one' graphics and video solution, similar to the ATI All-In-Wonder series. It's a single AGP board providing 2D, 3D, MPEG decoding (for DVDs etc.), as well as TV viewing/recording and video capture. The one distinct advantage the Matrox has over the ATI, however, is that it provides hardware-based MJPEG video compression. The input video quality is superior to that provided by other similar cards such as the All-In-Wonder series by ATI. It is visibly sharper and cleaner, which of course is important for video editing. The Matrox Marvel G400-TV features an onboard Zoran MJPEG codec chip, ...

At first glance I was slightly pesamistic about the Matrox Marvel G400-TV because of its lack of memory. With only 16MB of SGRAM memory it did not compare well with other graphics cards with 32MB as standard. However, although dated, the Matrox Marvel G400-TV peformed excellently in all fields. For games, the card gave an excellent frame rate at a resolution of 800x600 and faired quite well for a resolution of 1024x768. However, with new games coming out demanding more from your graphics card the Matrox should not be bought with gaming in mind. The card comes with an external box for connecting TV aerials, and video and audio inputs and outputs , which makes ...

Matrox have really got a beauty product on their hands here. You cannot go far wrong with the G400 Marvel. Although the 3d side of it is a bit long in the tooth, the video capture side of it is really awesome! If you are wanting to edit your home videos then this is the card for you! Although it does not support Firewire (and so if you have a nice Digital video camera you would be better off going for another solution) for those of us with hi-8 or VHS-C cameras, this card is exactly what you need. Sporting a break-out box, so you don't have to fiddle around behind your PC, all of your connections are right on the desktop. You get composite video in/out, ...