Company Name

Matrox Electronic Systems, Inc.

Address

1055 St. Regis Blvd.
Dorval, Quebec Canada H9P 2T4

Telephone

514-685-2630

Fax

514-685-2853

Year Founded

1976

Senior Management

• Branko Matic – Chairman and CFO
• Lorne Trottier - President
• Anita Salvator - Director HR

Employees

1000

Company Highlights

• 1976 –Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., was founded in 1976 in Montreal, Canada
• 1979 -  Matrox Electronic Systems began to supply system integrators on Wall Street with a line of financial information display products.
• More than 40 million 3D graphics accelerators shipped in five years.
• Sales have grown from US$30 million in 1993 to close to a half-billion dollars in 1999.
• Satellite offices in London, Paris, Milan, Munich, Stockholm, Taipei and Hong Kong.

Product

DigiSuite

Product Overview

Matrox’s DigiSuite product line is focused on the broadcast and post production markets.

Key Features

• Uncompressed-quality mode uses mathematically lossless encoding
• M-JPEG compressed data rates exceeding 15 MB/sec per stream (30 MB/sec combined) or 500 KB/frame in NTSC and 600 KB/frame in PAL, a compression ratio of 1.3:1. 
• Three simultaneously available DVE channels provide scaling, motion effects, and YUV color correction for two video streams plus graphics with alpha.
• Field-and frame-based variable-speed motion control
• AES/EBU and S/PDIF digital audio
• A live video window is supported through an optional Matrox DigiDesktop (PDF format, 135 KB) or Matrox Graphics Display card.
• Optional card provides serial digital (SDI) I/O.
• Audio and video breakout boxes
  

Pricing

$9,995

Platforms

WindowsNT

Product

DigiSuite LE

Product Overview

Matrox DigiSuite LE is a real-time nonlinear editing card with dual-streams of broadcast-quality video, 32-bit animated graphics, multiple channels of keyframeable DVE, transitions, color correction, motion effects, and advanced chroma/luma keying. It also features a variety of productivity tools including a high-speed multi-layer compositing engine and a software codec.

Key Features

• Realtime capture
• Realtime editing 
• Multi-layer compositing engine
• Realtime video output
• Digital bitstream output

Pricing

$3,995

Platforms

WindowsNT

Product

DigiSuite DTV

Product Overview

DigiSuite DTV is for the broadcast facility wanted to create digital TV content.

Key Features

• supports multi-format DV, DV50
• variable bit rate MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame editing
• provides MPEG-2 4:2:2P@ML and MPEG-2 MP@ML output for distribution applications such as broadcast transmission, video server storage, archiving, DVD authoring, and web video streaming
• composite, Y/C, and analog component video I/O are standard along with four channels of balanced/unbalanced analog audio I/O
• optional 1394 interface card provides an IEEE-1394 link
• optional SDI video interface module includes AES/EBU digital audio I/O
• optional SDI/SDTI interface card with eight embedded audio I/O channels supports faster than realtime digital transfers of compressed video
• optional realtime 3D DVE card

Pricing

$5,995

Platforms

WindowsNT

Product

RT2000

Product Overview

Matrox RT2000 is a realtime nonlinear editing solution for corporate and event video artists. The Matrox Flex 3D architecture of RT2000 enables the 3D graphics of Matrox’s Millennium G400 accelerator for broadcast-quality 3D DVE and 32-bit uncompressed animated graphics in a native DV editing environment.

Key Features

• Realtime dual-stream video editing with 32-bit animated graphics
• Realtime broadcast-quality 3D digital video effects (DVE) powered by Matrox Flex 3D
• Native-DV and MPEG-2 editing
• Analog and digital video input/output – Y/C, composite, 1394
• MPEG-2 output for distribution applications such as DVD authoring
• MPEG-1 and RealVideo output for web video streaming
• Integrated Matrox Millennium G400 Flex 3D Edition drives your high-performance desktop
• Stereo audio input/output gen-locked to video ensures perfect lip-sync
• Software Bundles include:
  
  Adobe - Premiere RT
  Sonic Foundry – Acid Music
  Ulead – Cool 3D
  Sonic Solutions – DVDit! LE

Pricing

$1,295

Platforms

Win 98

Company Positioning

There are several groups to Matrox and include:

• Matrox Graphics - a graphics chip designer and board manufacturer. The graphics group is typically ranked third in worldwide shipments of 3D chips by industry experts.
• Matrox Electronic Systems has three divisions: the Matrox Video Products Group, Matrox Imaging and Matrox Networks.
• Matrox Video Products Group designs and manufactures PC based digital video hardware and Windows NT development tools for OEMs, systems integrators and end-users in the television broadcast, cable, multimedia and post-production industries.
• Matrox Imaging is a designer and manufacturer of PC-based hardware and software for machine vision, image analysis and medical imaging applications.
• Matrox Networks provides networking solutions that include a full and versatile line of switches, hubs, NICs and Internet access products.

Specifically within the Video Group, Matrox’s DigiSuite products are targeted at the smaller studios (typically those with 1-5 people) for both the broadcast and corporate markets.  Whereas RT2000 is targeted more for corporate use, multimedia producers, event videographers and the educational markets.

Key Partnerships

The Video Group works closely with JVC who OEMs the DigiSuite line.

Competitive Position

Matrox has a clear advantage over some of the other video-only vendors when it comes to their manufacturing capabilities. Because they also design and manufacture millions of  units of 3D graphics hardware annually, they have certain competitive advantages and a knowledge-base that can be leveraged in the video space.

Financial Overview

• Matrox is a privately held company
• While overall company earnings are down in 1999, the Video Group has seen revenue double in the last year and expects the growth trend to continue.

Revenue (in millions)

1999
(ending 3/31/99)

Matrox Graphics

$473

Matrox Electronics

 $77

Total Revenue

$550

Matrox Graphics

• Millennium G400
• Millennium G200
• Marvel G400-TV