Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals, Reviews
TUAW review: ViDock Gfx multi-monitor solution for MacBook Pro
I love screen space. At the same time, my primary machine is a 2nd Gen, 17" MacBook Pro, which offers only one external DVI port. In my greedy quest to add more external monitors to my home workstation, I've tried a smorgasbord of products. I quickly gave up on USB to DVI solutions due to poor refresh rates and unmanageable color, and the closest I'd been able to come to a workable solution was Matrox's TripleHead2Go. The biggest drawback to that solution (and it ended up being big enough that my TripleHead2Go is gathering dust in a corner) is that the 2 or 3 monitors you hook up to it end up being treated as one large monitor. This means that you have fewer options in positioning your displays, and -- at least with 2 monitors connected -- things like menubars, the application switcher and even newly created windows and dialogs all pop up in the split between monitors. It works, but not well enough.
We'd heard tell of a product from Village Tronic called the ViDock Gfx, but after several disappointing experiences with other products in the same vein, I hadn't been ready to shell out for another try. Then, we got a review unit and it became clear that there was, in fact, a usable solution to the MacBook Pro's multi-monitor dilemma. Read on for my impressions after a week with this unique product.
Gallery: TUAW review: ViDock Gfx
Unboxing and install
It's a bit of a departure from the overall review, but I have to start with my very first impressions: the unboxing. The packaging for this device is utterly classy. From the textured, black box embossed with a silver Village Tronic logo to the companion disc with the signatures of all of the members of the development team, it generates some excitement in and of itself.
The box contains the main unit, about 7"x5"x2" with a permanently attached 3' ExpressCard/34 cable, a power supply, 2 DVI-VGA adapters (should you need them) and the CD. The CD failed to read for me, which was a bit of a downer in my initial impressions, but I went ahead without it, and everything "just worked." No drivers or software are needed to run the ViDock Gfx. When I contacted support to find out what I was missing from the unreadable disc, I was told that the only items on the CD of import were a PDF manual (sent to me) and a System Preferences application called "Voilà " (available for download, I'll get to that in a bit).
The ViDock Gfx plugs into the ExpressCard/34 port of the MacBook Pro and provides two extra DVI ports, in addition to your laptop screen and the built-in DVI port, for a total of 4 displays. It's only compatible with certain generations of the MacBook Pro (2 and 4), though: if you have a 1st, 3rd or 5th generation MBP, you're out of luck for the time being. Compatibility with the Unibody line is promising, but not fully determined yet (I'll add an update when they have final word). Mine is a 2nd gen, so I was ready to go. I learned right away that the ViDock Gfx is not hot-pluggable on a Mac; you have to shut down completely to plug or unplug it. This inconvenience aside, once it's plugged in, your system has two extra DVI ports with no additional hassle. They just show up, and any monitors attached to them are treated just like a monitor attached to the internal DVI port. In addition to the 21" monitor running on my internal graphics card, I hooked up two 20" Dell 2005FPW monitors (the ones made with the same guts as the Cinema Displays at the time, just 1/4 of the price), calibrated the color and started testing the applications I use every day.
I had no problem setting the Dell monitors to their max resolution of 1680x1050. There's no detectable delay or stutter in video playback on the extra monitors. Color calibration worked smoothly and with the same results you'd get from a monitor running on the internal card. The fact that the ports provide discrete outputs means I can position the monitors in any configuration I like, with any combination of position, ordering and orientation, and there's no drawback to making one of them the primary (menubar and dock) display. There were very few applications which displayed any type of anomaly when open on the additional displays.
The included Preferences software, Voilà , provides some interesting utilities, primarily designed around the idea that it's easy to lose a cursor or window when your setup is four monitors wide. You can set hotkeys for various screen locations on the fly, and highlight the cursor location with a key combination. The most useful of the utilities is a HUD showing all of your displays with miniature representations of your open windows, allowing for quick navigation, ala Spaces. The utility, however, is not Spaces-friendly, so if you're running spaces on a four-monitor setup, you're better off using the default methods of navigating.
There's a single, powered USB 2.0 port on the unit. It's a convenience, allowing a hub to be connected and reducing the number of things you need to plug into your MacBook Pro when setting it up at the multi-monitor workstation. This was definitely nice, and I've been running a total of 10 USB devices through it with no problem.
Issues
My first concern was the noise level of the fans. It's not bad, really, but the general noise level during any activity which triggers the built in hardware video acceleration (thus kicking in the fans) is about equal to the sound of my MacBook Pro with both fans running at around 4000 RPM.
I did experience, on occasion, periods where all of the displays would flash blue as if I had connected or disconnected a monitor. This would happen several times and then go away. I had checked all of my connections, but after completely disconnecting and reconnecting all of the cables, the problem went away. Looks like user error.
As I mentioned earlier, there were very, very few applications which had any problem with the setup. In Path Finder, if you have the "zoom" effect turned on when double clicking an icon, a rectangular artifact about the size of the third frame of the zoom animation would be left on the screen, usually just an outline of the box. The artifact would disappear when the application was terminated. This issue was easily worked around by either not running a Path Finder window on those displays, or turning off the zoom effect. Strangely, the glitch seems to be isolated to Path Finder; other applications making use of the same effect didn't trigger this behavior.
The only truly major application incompatibility I experienced was with Aperture. When running Aperture while all 4 displays were active, all of the additional displays would display garbled messes when multiple photos were selected. I don't know if this is a software bug, something peculiar about some of my photos, or a hardware bug. If the display on the built-in DVI port is disconnected, and the only external displays active are on the ViDock Gfx, the problem is greatly reduced, although there were still some instances of garbled screens. This happened no matter what the Aperture settings for additional displays were (span, blank, mirror, etc.).
Working with Photoshop, Illustrator, Motion, Final Cut, and any of my other favorites was never an issue. Quite the opposite, it was an immense pleasure to have so many extra pixels of screen real estate to work with.
Impressions
I'm going to have a very hard time parting with the ViDock Gfx when I send the review unit back. I've grown quite accustomed to having 4 displays, and I'm seriously considering purchasing a unit of my own. The issues it may have are extremely minimal compared to the overall performance and quality of the device, and -- for the most part -- easy to work around. My overall reaction is one of awe; to finally have a viable solution to adding additional monitors makes me very, very happy.
The ViDock Gfx for Mac is priced at $499. That obviously puts it outside of the price range the average consumer wants to swallow, especially when you add the cost of two additional, high-quality displays. However, the average MacBook Pro user is likely in a position where the extra screen real estate becomes more valuable, and could put it to use in a way that the general population wouldn't need to. Further, all other existing options have enough significant drawbacks that the ViDock Gfx is essentially the only game in town. Perhaps the technology will be replicated in the future, and prices will come down, but for now, if you want additional displays on a MacBook Pro, this is by far the highest quality, most usable option.
The ViDock Gfx is available for online purchase, or see the "Where to Buy" page for more purchase options in your area. Check out the gallery for some shots of the unboxing and the ViDock Gfx in use.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Scottyboy said 10:26AM on 2-05-2009
For $500, plus the cost of the monitors, why not just get a 36" or 42" Plasma/LCD and use a HDMI to DVI cable?
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Dyranios said 10:45AM on 2-05-2009
uhh TVs as monitors suck alot, he would be better of buying a decent 30" (that is where the size/quality) optimum balance seems to be at the moment.
nemish79 said 10:46AM on 2-05-2009
What's the max resolution you get from a LCD/Plasma?
Physical size != Maximum Resolution (i.e. screen real estate)
jmetts said 11:04AM on 2-05-2009
As others have pointed out, its not the monitor size that is valuable here, it is the resolution.
Granted with an LCD/Plasma with a 1080 native resolution, you would get 1920x1080 which would be greater than the 1680x1050 that he is getting out of one of the 20" monitors he is using, but 1680x1050 times 2 will give you 3360x1050 which blows away the 1920x1080, and that isn't account for the other 2 monitors he is running.
Now, for gaming, go with the LCD/Plasma as the size of the display running a game at 1920x1080 is more than enough. Likewise, video playback and any other multimedia purposes will benefit from the 36" or 42" monitor, but if you need screen real estate for palettes, photo management, video editing, etc; you need more resolution.
Henry said 10:28AM on 2-05-2009
I've the same situation with a 15" MacBook Pro. For the past year I've been happily running one 23" Apple display directly from the MBP and a second 23" Apple display with ScreenRecycler attached to a MacMini I keep in my office. Works great. (The second screen has a slightly slower refresh rate due to being over VNC, but it's totally fine for 95% of what I do and I just arrange my workspace such that those other 5% of tasks take place on the primary monitor.)
www.screenrecycler.com
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THJ said 3:13PM on 2-05-2009
Sweet, I had no idea this type of app even existed.
Jackinloadup said 10:40AM on 2-05-2009
Iv been waiting for a solution like this for quite some time.
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Nick L said 10:52AM on 2-05-2009
VillageTronic, now that's a name from the past! I still have a Picasso II graphics card from them for the Amiga :-)
To show how well VT make stuff, their last Amiga graphics card was the Picasso IV, and they regularly still go for $400 or so.
Yes, for a 10 year old piece of hardware for a well obsolete computer.
Good on them! Great to see them still creating quality niche products.
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Kennon said 11:07AM on 2-05-2009
Hmm.. I have wanted a solution like this for a LONG time, however the $500 price tag puts it WELL out of my price range. As much as I would love to have this device, I can't justify spending more than $300 for a solution like this. Good to know it's out there, and hopefully it'll get a price drop in the future.
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Chris Leither said 12:47PM on 2-05-2009
Well... I've been waiting for this to come out for a looooong loooong time... so I finally bought Matrox's TripleHead2Go Digital. And well, what to say?! I really DO love it. If you have 'some' screens lying around I would not recommend it, but in my case I started everything from scratch i.e. buying the TripleHead and 3 new 19" screens with a small bezel.
While everybody may see this quite differently it is THE single best setup for me. Having 3 screens being recognized as a single one offers the advantage of both having a huge real-estate as better support with certain Apps that lack natural multi-screen prefs.
A 30" screen would offer about the same amount of pixels in total, but
1. are (if you want a decent one) at least 250-350$ more costly
2. they are either 16:9 or 16:10 and not ULTRA-widescreen, which, in my case, offers better productivity since I can more easily arrange all open Apps and Documents on one horizontal axis (I e.g. do a lot of project based work with several Apps open at the same time... like one pages doc I write into myself, 1 .pdf file for required background information, and a browser to do some research. Before I had this 3840x1024 setup it really was a hassle to switch back and forth between all these Apps while now I have a centered primary screen and 2 auxiliary ones.
3. if gaming is concerned even a MacBook Pro will pretty much suck at resolutions higher than 1280x1024, but with this setup I can easily just run it on a single screen turning the others off and run it in the screen's native res.
So, I mean I'm not saying the TripleHead2Go is the perfect solution (at least not for everyone) but it does imho not deserve this bashing as it CAN be you personal perfect one. You just have to know what exactly you want.
As far as I am concerned I'd never swap it for anything else!!!
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Alex T said 12:55PM on 2-05-2009
This might be a stupid question but how can I find which generation MBP 17" I have?
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Chris Leither said 12:58PM on 2-05-2009
Apple Menu
-> About this Mac
-> More Info
-> Hardware Overview
My MBP was the last non-unibody and has the Model Identifier say:
MacBookPro4,1 marking it as a 4th Generation one...
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Alex T said 1:01PM on 2-05-2009
Thats what I thought.. I guess we both got lucky then because I have a 4th generation too.
Hmm, 500 is a tiny bit steep though.
Chris Leither said 1:08PM on 2-05-2009
Well if you can make use of it... I can e-mail you (Alex T, or anybody else) a photo of my setup with the Matrox solution and give some explanation if it seems like an alternative to you...
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Thomase said 1:25PM on 2-05-2009
What I don't get and what really annoys me is that there's a 512 MB version for PC, not for mac though... I do live visuals and need as much graphics power as possible...
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Scott Mahle said 6:43PM on 2-05-2009
I have a 24" Imac and I add a 2nd Monitor to it. I've been looking for the ability to add a 3rd. do they have a product that will let me do what this product does for the MBP?
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Benjamin said 9:13PM on 2-05-2009
I think you mean discrete, not discreet.
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Brett Terpstra said 9:36PM on 2-05-2009
Right on. Fixed.
joe said 2:15AM on 2-06-2009
I'm with the "get a 30" idea.
I have an external RAID attached via ExpressCard.
No way I'm giving that up for 2 more monitors.
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JSE said 4:01AM on 2-06-2009
Unfortunately, everyone should know that this WILL NOT WORK with the new Gen 5 Unibody MacBook Pro. I have two 24" dells that I have been using for a year with a Gen 4 MBP using a Matrox Dual Head2Go - no problems. That won't work anymore because of the new MiniDisplay Port (which isn't compatible with DualHead) and according to the rep I spoke to today at Village Tronic the new MBP can't send video through the ExpressCard slot. This apparently was a problem with the Gen3 MPB that was never actually fixed, just corrected in Gen4. Looks like they digressed and it's out again in Gen5. Really annoying that Apple has put out their flagship notebook and there is no possible way to connect it to two 24" screens. All of the PC users in my office with Lenovo machines have zero problems. Isn't Apple supposed to be on top of the whole high end graphics thing? Would love to hear from anyone who has an idea on how to hook a Unibody MBP up to two 24" screens at full resolution (without using a mac mini).
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