Matrox Monarch HDX Encoder Product Review
By Adam Noyes
Daniel Aragay and Nina Josefsson from Quickchannel wrote up a great little review for the Matrox Monarch HDX!
My name is Daniel Aragay and I work as a media producer at Quickchannel, we specialise in streaming and recording. I have tested many different streaming encoders for our video productions over the years, and recently had the opportunity to test Matrox’ Monarch HDX.
Matrox is renowned in the video streaming and production space so I had high expectations for this dual-channel hardware encoder and would like to share my thoughts and feedback.
Monarch HDXencoder: Does it pass the test on the move?
Running many events a year, it’s important to be able to set up quickly whilst ensuring the customer/producer and their viewing audience, are equally satisfied with the final production. Thanks to Matrox’ Monarch HDX, which was surprisingly easy to use, our team was able to provide stable, high-quality content that did not disappoint.
Monarch HDX is a versatile webcasting encoder, it generates an H.264-encoded stream (compliant with Quickchannel’s RTMP protocol) and is equipped with dual-encoders, sharing 30 Mb/s of encoding across both channels.
Monarch HDX is used for a variety of workflows, from dual-channel streaming, dual-channel recording, to simultaneous streaming and recording. I have used all these functionalities for different productions, where streaming and/or recording is required but have primarily used them to webcast live events.
As I mentioned earlier, we are responsible for overseeing many events, from hosted webinars in studios to adhoc city council meetings, and the robust Monarch HDX has proven to be a perfect choice for these mobile productions. It has a well-built design.
Final thoughts
Matrox’ reputation sets high expectations, but I am pleased to say that the Monarch HDX delivers and ticks all the boxes we were looking for in an encoder: ease of use, dual-channel support, SDI and HDMI inputs, high-quality streams, with a field-friendly design. Overall, I’m very pleased with the Matrox Monarch HDX, which now serves as one of our de-facto encoders.
If you are looking for a full-featured, reasonably priced, dual-channel encoder for your webcasting or recording projects, this is the right product for you.