By J.R. Bookwalter, December 2, 2008
Editor's Note: This is an extended edition of the review that appears in the December edition of DV magazine.
Laptop power users have long been jealous of their desktop cousins. In recent years, laptops have gained ever-higher amounts of memory and ever-faster processor speeds and storage options, but they’ve often been crippled when it comes to external display choices. My late 2006-era Apple MacBook Pro 15" is capable of powering a 30" display (such as the Dell model I’m writing this review on) with the laptop screen as an extended desktop, but for editing, extreme Photoshop work, or even just day-to-day computing, two displays may not be enough anymore.
Enter Village Tronic, which has been offering a number of external display options in recent years, such as the VTBook for CardBus laptops. The company has now extended those options to include ViDock Gfx, an external box containing an ATI Radeon HD 2600 video card capable of powering two external displays at up to 2560x1600 analog or 2560x1600 on the primary screen and 1920x1200 on the secondary screen for digital, with the ExpressCard/34 connection common to most laptops sold today.
ViDock is offered in three flavors: Business (with 128MB of memory) and Pro (with 256MB of memory) for Windows XP or Vista with their VT MultiDisplay software, and the Mac version with 256MB and their VT Voila software. The Windows models support DirectX 9 (on the Business version) or 10 (on the Pro version) and Aero 3D GUI compatibility; the Mac version supports Quartz Extreme under Mac OS X. The Pro and Mac models look identical and come with dual DVI-i connectors, two VGA adapters and one HDMI adapter; the Business model has one DVI connector and one VGA connector, plus the aforementioned adapters. An ExpressCard/34 host interface is mounted at the end of a sturdy, nearly 3' cable.
The model supplied to DV was the Pro version, which comes with the VT MultiDisplay software on CD (version 3.02, which is a beta to add Vista compatibility) and a license key that is entered at the time of installation. I first installed the software on my niece’s Toshiba Satellite A212 laptop under Windows Vista. The software installed without a hitch as a system tray icon; you are prompted to plug in the ViDock prior to a system restart.
Unfortunately, when the system came back up, the laptop screen was black and video was output only to the external ViDock displays (in this case, two different models of 20" Apple Cinema Displays). The software offers a dizzying array of options, but try as I might, the system recognized only the two ViDock displays. After shutting down and ejecting the ViDock card, I restarted and the laptop display kicked on normally. Strangely, once the system was up, I inserted the ViDock and all four displays were recognized (the Toshiba screen and its unconnected external video port, and the two displays plugged into the ViDock itself). This anomaly occurred regardless of what combination and types of monitors I had plugged in.
Despite that quirk, the video displayed by ViDock is gorgeous. A few clicks got the highest resolutions available for each display (and VT MultiDisplay automatically showed all available resolutions in every case), with the desktop extended to each. I was able to quickly and easily move windows between screens, move the main display from monitor to monitor, arrange displays and change resolutions on the fly (all screens go black for a moment during resolution changes, but they all reappear just as before)
. VT MultiDisplay also gives you a number of options for saving and restoring desktop icons and customizing screen savers (each display can be set to something different).
Next, I tried plugging ViDock into my MacBook Pro running Windows XP via Boot Dock. The card was recognized and the software installed, but, after a restart, I was greeted with a black screen and an error code, and a few moments later a message that the bootable device couldn’t be found. With the ViDock unplugged, Windows XP rebooted normally again. Tech support informed me that the ViDock units built for Windows are not compatible with Mac hardware running Windows — or even Mac OS X itself. While that may be true, I was able to restart under OS X Leopard (10.5.4) and use the ViDock just fine without any additional software. The ViDock isn’t fully hot-swappable — I was able to insert the card with the computer active under Windows, but ejecting it in this mode will crash the system and is not advised. On Mac OS X, hot-swapping caused a crash either way, but thankfully all monitors are present at startup with the card inserted.
I did find one display quirk in my tests, and that was with DVD player software. On both the Toshiba laptop under Windows Vista and the MacBook Pro under OS X, moving the DVD window to any ViDock display would cause display problems. Under Windows, the disc would stop and an error message popped up; under Mac OS X, the disc appeared to continue playing (I could hear the audio), but the screen was a mess of yellow blocks.
In both cases, I was able to play DVDs from the native laptop window even with the ViDock plugged in, so this isn’t a huge problem as long as your main display isn’t on the ViDock (or you don’t watch DVDs). The one exception was the 50" Samsung HDTV in my home theater setup — when I used ViDock with the HDMI adapter, the DVD player software displayed correctly and looked great. QuickTime and other movie files played just fine, even in full-screen mode, since the ViDock has built-in hardware video acceleration.
If the ViDock has one major downside, it’s that it runs loud and hot! After a few hours of use with just one monitor, the fan was spinning like crazy and I could almost fry an egg on the outside of the case. Be sure to give this unit proper ventilation. Otherwise, ViDock is a solid performer, with a few caveats. It handled every monitor that I threw at it, from an old Compaq A410 VGA unit to my 30" Dell display and a 50" home theater HDTV (with either the HDMI or VGA port).
Village Tronic hasn’t announced pricing as of press time for any version of ViDock Gfx (they’re accepting pre-orders on their Web site) so it’s hard to say if it’s the best value in town, but for on-the-go laptop-enabled editors and multimedia producers who want to be able to dock their system to multiple monitors at high resolutions, this unit shows a lot of promise. I’m hopeful that continued software updates of VT MultiDisplay will squash many of the remaining quirks and let ViDock shine.
VILLAGE TRONIC ViDOCK Gfx PRO with VT MULTIDISPLAY
$TBA
DV Score:
Pros:
Adds two additional external monitor ports to any ExpressCard-enabled laptop, beautiful, high-resolution video, hardware compatible with PC or Mac.
Cons:
External box is on the large side, runs loud and sometimes hot, not fully hot-swappable, some quirks with the included software.
Bottom Line:
The expandability and image quality outweighs some compatibility issues. Recommended, but with some caveats.
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