Why don't more video cards with TV out have a DVDMax mode?

[dvdyke]

I would love to get a faster 3D type card but. TV out is a must! OK so a lot of 3D cards have a TV out *BUT* none of them as far as I know have the equivalent to DVDMax mode on the Matrox G series cards. What it does it output the video to the secondary head/TV out 'directly'. That is the TV out is *NOT* just a copy of what is currently being shown on the desktop. The video is piped directly. This means you can have video running in a window on your desktop or even minimized to your taskbar and it will STILL be playing fullscreen on the TV out. This is great because it means you can still use the computer to do things while playing back a movie. It also results in a more natural output to the TV (I have compared desktop output to direct output and the colors are different and the image can look different also depending on what res you are at etc. I much prefer direct video output).

So do any other cards suport an equivalent feature?

[Bugs Bunny]

ATI Radeon 7500 and 8500 (and now the 8500DV if you want video-in) have the Hydravision, which is the equiv of Matrox's DualHead. Features twin RAMDACs, Immersion II (fancy word for adaptive deinterlacing). Retail 8500 is $250 US, OEM is $180. It's equiv to the NVidia TI500. The older 7500 is around $100, probably around the NVid 2 MX speed.

NVid has the TwinView, but it's only in the MX line, and reportedly fares poorly against the Radeon/Matrox solutions.