HP Z800: leaps and bounds over predecessors; still could be better

HP Z800 has a rather subdued exterior. It doesn't manifest its power by chrome accents, edgy or flashy design. Yet its heft and build quality manifest themselves even before you pop the cover open to peer inside.  And then you are really in awe.

Ever peaked under the hood of a BMW M6?  That's what Z800's inside looks like.  CPU/memory and card bays have separate plastic covers and are compartmentalized for efficient airflow.  Hard drives are in removable trays on a backplane.  Which means no wires or cables.  In fact very few cables are visible - a huge departure from its predecessor xw8600.  The Z800 is the only system that is better designed than a Mac Pro.  Finally, someone did it.

The unusually shaped power supply at the top can be removed and swapped without any tools, much like almost anything else in this system: aside from CPU heat sinks, everything is tool-less.  Yes even the hard drive trays.  Among other features are gobs of RAM, PCIe slots, SAS and SATA ports, RAID5 on SATA ports. HP on-site support, its responsiveness and quality are also unmatched.

The Z800 leaps not only over its predecessors the xw8600 and xw9400 in design, features and power, but also over competitors. There is nothing like the Z800 in the market. Not from Dell, not from Lenovo, not from Apple, not from custom system integrators.

Can Z800 stand improvement?  Of course - I have a shortlist. If you do, post a comment.

Noise: not as quiet as a Mac Pro. Z800 is still practically silent, even under load, despite all of its 8 to 10 fans.  Mac Pro only has 3 or 4 larger ones which spin at slower speeds and therefore generate less noise.  Granted, Mac Pro is radically more limited than Z800 on PCIe slots, available power, RAM and storage expansion - but still, a part of me wishes the Z800 could be as silent as the Mac Pro.

Hard drive activity lights. You can put up to six 3.5" drives in a Z800, four of them into swappable bays connected to the SAS backplane. However there is only one HDD activity light for all of them. A hard drive that is about to die or has problems, often has much more activity than it should.  Having an individual activity light for each hard drive would make it much easier to trouble-shoot and diagnose.  On HP servers, there are two diagnostic lights for each drive bay - for a good reason.

Storage expandability: there is room for more! There are 14 hard disk connectors on the motherboard (8 SAS, 6 SATA), but room for only 6 drives, 4 of them on a SAS backplane. How about an option for 8-10 SFF drives vs. 4 LFF ones?

Save for a few very minor gripes, HP Z800 is today's best workstation, the top dog, unmatched by anyone else.

Matrox codecs now available free of charge

Video captured using Matrox products can now be viewed and editing on non-Matrox Windows systems without having to buy anything. Just download the codecs.

Fresh from Matrox:

In the past, Matrox has offered the Matrox M.Key/100 USB device that unlocks the Matrox MPEG-2 I-frame HD, DVCPRO HD, HDV, and other Matrox Video for Windows (VFW) codecs for use on 32-bit systems that don’t have Matrox editing cards. Since the launch of this product, M.Key/100 has supported only 32-bit Windows operating systems. With the recent surge of 64-bit operating systems, M.Key/100 is now incompatible in many environments. The popularity of Matrox codecs has also grown, which has increased the market demand for open codecs from Matrox. Therefore, Matrox will no longer be offering the Matrox M.Key/100 USB device. As an alternative to M.Key/100, Matrox is pleased to announce our new Matrox VFW software codec package, which will be available for download free of charge from our website. This package provides the following VFW software codecs for use on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems:

• Matrox DV/DVCAM
• Matrox DVCPRO
• Matrox DVCPRO50
• Matrox DVCPRO HD
• Matrox MPEG-2 I-frame in SD and HD resolutions, with or without alpha
• Matrox Uncompressed in SD and HD resolutions, with or without alpha
• Matrox Offline HD
• Matrox M-JPEG and HDV (playback only)

The new Matrox VFW software codec package will allow any system to use AVI files that have been captured on Matrox Axio, RT.X, and MXO2 systems, and to also create these AVI files for use on Matrox systems. This flexibility lets you use any workstation to do a rough cut, then copy the project and assets to an Axio, RT.X, or MXO2 system to finish the job. There is no need for time-consuming recapturing. As well, dedicated compositing or animation workstations can render finished elements that will play back in real time on Matrox editing and playout systems.

The new Matrox VFW software codec is available to all Matrox Axio registered users as a free download from the support section of the website.

Thank you,
Matrox Video Product Group

Intel's new Xeon 5600 series processors

Intel announced new server and workstation processors last month: up to 40% faster than the current 5500 series, more cores, more features, at about the same prices. Their published benchmarks show a performance improvement ranging from 21 to 48%. The processors use the same technologies Intel introduced with the 5500 series:

• The Hyper-Threading Technology doubles the number of execution threads to increase performance for workloads optimized for multiple threads, such as simulation-based design, ray tracing, rendering, etc.
• The Turbo Boost Technology "overclocks" the core frequencies under heavy load, to increase performance.
• The Smart Cache dynamically allocates cache resources based on the demands of each core so data is managed more efficiently to optimize execution across all cores.

(Source: "Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series workstation product brief" -- intel.com, PDF, 224KB)

The new processors will work with the same chipsets, motherboards and memory as the 5500 series making the upgrade seamless.

HP announced servers (link, PDF) with the new 5600 series processors, but not workstations yet.

Matrox Axio 4.2.1 to be released March 19th

Release 4.2.1 for Matrox Axio will be available for download on March 19. The Release will provide the following new features:

• Support for creating 1080p @ 29.97 fps sequences.
• Support for XDCAM EX split clips and XDCAM EX metadata.
• Overall stability improvements.

Additional resources:

• Matrox Axio download area
• Matrox Axio LE on dv411.com

Color Accurate Monitors for Digital Artists

Problem: you are James Cameron working on an HD trailer of Avatar; you need to be 200% confident in the picture and color quality before posting it online: it's got to be just spectacular to uphold the Titanic reputation of Mr. Cameron. What monitor(s) do you need to use to be absolutely sure the picture is color accurate?

If you find out - let me know. Given the $230m budget of Avatar, it's probably the very best of the top-shelf equipment, with some stuff custom-developed specifically for the movie, along with special equipment to verify that the picture quality is adequate. $20K for a set would not be outlandish.

For the rest of us - photographers, videographers, digital artists on a budget: what display monitors would do a good job ensuring that we don't miss a bad spot, a discoloration or an artifact? Photographers and Red camera users working with raw 10-, 12- and 14-bit images rather than 8-bit JPEGs and MPEGs, the issue is rather huge: the banding artifacts we are seeing on a computer monitor - are they just on the monitor, or in the actual file? How can I be sure before sending them to the publisher? The only way to get a better idea is to get a monitor that is capable of bit depth higher than 8. Enter IPS panels and 30-bit (3x 10-bit) displays such as HP DreamColor LP2480zx and Dell U2410.

Being a complete noob with respect to critical color applications and color calibration, I set out to do what I do best: go through specifications and manuals, google around and try to figure out the differences between two popular displays that both claim fantastic color accuracy. Do not expect a lot of depth from this article (but do expect a little): it's merely an attempt to figure out the basics based on a 45-minute research. It did turn out to be a 6-hour research - but nobody's perfect.

We'll skip highly specialized - and expensive - color-accurate displays from Eizo and Lacie, and focus on two top models from HP and Dell. Both are 24-inch IPS (In-Plane Switching) LCD monitors with 1920x1200 maximum resolution and a host of usual inputs such as DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, component and composite video. One is listed at almost $3K (street prices around $2,000), the other one - $600. Which one should I get?

Dell UltraSharp U2410 24-inch Monitor, $599 SRP
- 1920x1200 resolution
- IPS panel type
- Contrast ratio: 1000:1 (typ), 80,000:1 (Max, Dynamic Contrast on)
- 400 cd/m2 typical brightness
- 6ms Typical Response Time (gray to gray)
- 178/178º Max Viewing Angle (vertical/horizontal)
- 1.07 billion colors
- 110% (CIE 1976) Color Gamut
- 12-bit Internal Processing
- AdobeRGB - 96% Coverage
- sRGB emulates 72% of NTSC Color (100% Coverage)
- xvYCC Compatibility
- DVI-D, DisplayPort(DP), HDMI, VGA, Component, Composite inputs included

Pros: value. IPS-type monitors display a much wider color range than the prevalent TN-type ones, yet have lower brightness and contrast, and cost more. At $599 SRP, Dell U2410 is a great value with decent brightness and contrast on a par with the best monitors from other manufacturers.

Cons:

• Unlike HP LP2480zx, U2410 is not a 30-bit (10 bits per color component) monitor, according to UK reviewer TFT Central. Sadly, Dell misleads in its specifications by saying that the display is capable of over a billion colors. Dell conveniently forgets to mention that these colors are not all available at the same time. Only 16.7 million colors can displayed at any given time, a feature of most 24-bit displays (8 bits per color component).
• Dell calibrates this monitor at the factory but does not offer any other means to color-calibrate it. Certainly, there are 3rd party color-calibration tools you can use for this monitor, but unlike HP, Dell not only does not offer any of them, it does not mention even a possibility of it.
• Dell also engages in the usual and often misleading specifications game listing only the most advantageous items: the dynamic contract ratio of 80K:1 is utterly useless while a typical one of 1,000:1 can only be found in the manual.
• Same goes for 6ms response time that only applies to gray-to-gray transition while the more realistic full black-to-white-to-black number is not listed at all. HP lists all these numbers up front as if saying, we've got nothing to hide.

Verdict: Dell U2410 is a great quality IPS monitor with 24-bit color. It is not however a professional tool for color-critical applications, and is comparable to HP LP2475w rather than DreamColor LP2480zx.


HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display, $2,899 SRP
(in green are the specifications where HP either trumps Dell, or that Dell does not list)
- 1920x1200 resolution
- IPS panel type
- 1,000:1 Typical Contrast Ratio
- 250 cd/m2 typical brightness (maximum white luminance)
- 6ms Typical Response Time (gray to gray), 12 ms (rise+fall, full black-to-white-to-black)
- 178/178º Viewing Angle (vertical/horizontal)
- Over 1 billion colors in native mode
- Backlight Life (to half brightness): 50K hours
- Backlight Type: RGB LEDs
- Gamma/Tone Response: Programmable from "gamma" value of 1.0 to 3.0.
- Color Gamut: Native gamut approx. 133% NTSC (in CIE 1976 u'v' space)
- Adobe RGB Coverage: 100%
- sRGB Coverage: 100%
- Lookup Table: 12 bits per entry, 1024 entries per table
- Internal Processing: Min. 10 bits/color throughout video processing pipeline.
- Color Space Presets: 7 color space presets; 1 user-programmable plus six factory programmed: sRGB, Rec. 709, Rec. 601, Adobe® RGB, DCI-P3 emulation (97%), full gamut

Pros:

• HP LP2480zx specs show better color gamut (133% vs. 110% NTSC) and Adobe RGB coverage (100% vs. 96%), as well more presets and full programmability of its LUTs (Look-Up Tables) - essential for professional color applications. I'd venture that the better gamut and coverage do matter for very critical color grading applications.
• HP offers HP DreamColor Advanced Profiling Solution for $349 on its web site, to calibrate the monitor, validate and trend its performance. No such thing at dell.com.
• HP published a "mini white paper" about LP2480zx, "Understanding the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display’s 30-bit panel" where it explains what a 30-bit color is, and why it is better than 24- or even 18-bit color of mainstream monitor. Dell's mentions 1 billion colors on U2410, which is directly related to a 30-bit color (30 bits represent a number of a little over a billion), however UK's TFT Central in its U2410 review says that the screen "utilises an 8-bit H-IPS panel, capable of producing 16.7 million colours".
• HP describes the 30-bit workflow and how to ensure that your computer configuration is fully 30-bit, from your application through the graphics card and its driver, to the cable (gotta use DisplayPort 1.1 or HDMI 1.3 for 30-bit - standard DVI is limited to 24-bit), to the monitor.
• According to HP, they developed the LP2480zx in "close collaboration with DreamWorks Animation", for their color-critical applications. See PDF brochure on HP website.
• HP "DreamColor and HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display - Frequently Asked Questions" talks about various color spaces and the monitor's compatibility with them, the importance of low black levels, dimmability and tone response and its ability to synchronize to standard video frame rates.

Cons: lower brightness of 250 vs. 400 cd/m2; price.

Verdict: if you are James Cameron checking out biolumenance scenes of the Avatar HD trailer, you certainly need HP DreamColor LP2480zx, at the very least. In other words, if you utilize professional color grading applications requiring 100% color accuracy, this monitor fits the bill.

Windows 7's XP mode

Let's get something out of the way: Windows 7's XP mode will not help running add-on PCI, PCIe or PCI-X cards that don't have Windows 7 drivers. Examples: Matrox DigiSuite (LE, DTV, etc.), RT.X100, Pinnacle Targa 3000, etc. If you have a working system with one of these cards, do not upgrade to Windows 7.

Put it simply: any hardware that doesn't have drivers for Vista or 7, still will not run in "XP Mode" on Windows 7. The "XP Mode" is a virtual machine, a whole "virtual computer" that tricks Windows XP into thinking it runs on physical hardware. It can only access devices that have Windows 7 drivers. So the "XP Mode" is primarily for software that doesn't like running on Windows Vista or 7, and insists on running on Windows XP.

That's not to say XP Mode isn't cool: it is. It's been there in various incarnations for quite some time, and on Windows 7, it adds a few perks that make it even better:

• Access to USB devices, such as flash drives.
• Direct access to Windows 7 hard drives.
• Access "XP Mode" applications directly from Windows 7 desktop.

If you have applications that require Windows XP, such as Intuit QuickBooks 2003, Windows 7' XP Mode is for you.

See TechRepublic's video on the subject:

Windows 7 On The Cheap

Ed Bott on ZDNet: Seven perfectly legal ways to get Windows 7 cheap (or even free).