Hardwareluxx: Why did you chose not to support two Thunderbolt ports? In the reviewers guide you are mentioning the DS1 could be the end of a daisy chain, but what if people want it to be the starting point? Most desktop hardware with a thunderbolt port uses two of them to give the user more flexibility.
Matrox: In trying to appeal to the widest audience possible, we wanted to elminate the need for additional adapters to connect to a typical (non-Apple) monitor. They can be misplaced or be points of failure and add cost to the over all solution. Had we put a second TB port we would have expected the great majority of our users would simply have connected a monitor to it and we would have forced them to use an adpater.
Hardwareluxx: Why do you think one USB 3.0 is enough? Your competitors are using more then one USB 3.0 and do without USB 2.0.
Matrox: Here again, we made a trade off - cost versus feature. Between the USB3 port of the DS1 and the USB3 ports available on the new laptops, we are confident that there are enough USB3 ports available to the vast majority of people out there. Few device exist other than drives that can take advanatge of this bandwidth. There are innumerable types of USB2 devcies that will never require USB3 bandwidth and may never integrate that technology.
These are the devices we expect will be connected to the USB2 ports.
Hardwareluxx: Is there a technical reason for the HDMI and DVI out to just support 1920x1080? A lot displays (especially those used on desktops) do support a higher resolution, but I think there is a technical reason for that restriction. Am I right? Referring to the first question, a second Thunderbolt port would give the user the chance to connect a display via Mini-DisplayPort.
Matrox: The DVI version of the DS1 can drive up to full single link DVI resolution which is 1920 x 1080. The HDMI version is restricyted to 1920 x 1080 as this is the display resolution of native HDMI monitors. As we felt these resolutions represented the vast majority of use cases we opted to restrict the design to "single link" DVI resolutions. Note as well that it is professionals that would most likely use these larger monitors. Apple appeals already to this clientele with their TB monitor already which included the docking functionality.