woooah... quite a lot to read....
BUT
you wanted to know whats really going on...and why this takes a long time...the real issues are very complex.

We have NO plans to upgrade our Macs to 10.4.x (tiger) so I'm not interested in V4 or anything to do with Tiger yet - we are still going to be running everything on 10.3.x for the moment - V4 and tiger is NOT show safe.
v4 and tiger are not the same thing. there is no dependance.
you can run v4 on 10.3.9
v4 and v3.31 use identical playback engines. just a different gui.

all the new stuff in v4 has been absolutely hammered on huge shows for the last 18months as pixelmad.
the only difference being that i had control over the hardware and i only had a small number of people doing this. it is not new at all. really. its not new code.

Does Cat v3.3.1 address the issues whereby CatV3.3.0 would only sucessfully run and be show safe when running on Mac OS10.3.3 and ATI 4.5.1 with the Open GL Overide settings?
you have a lot of different configurations of hardware----
you will have to try it and see.
this is an iterative process.
you take this step by step just like everyone else.
you will need to tell me whether it works for you.
and what you did to make it work.
did it work first time?
did it work the whole time?
i cannot give the answers for your hardware.
because i dont know the answer.
you need to make sure that you create duplicate partitions, on separate drives. and slowly build confidence that its works.
thats why this has to be done as a public beta.
there are too many different hardware and software configurations out there.

With some newer Macs delivered with OS10.4 could not be downgraded to 10.3.3 due to firmware issues - so we HAD to upgrade to 10.3.9 and sun the discs slow to avoid crashes.
the 'slow disc' crash should have been fixed.
suggest you try and report the results here.
as should any other outstanding crashing issues related to drivers.
as far as i am aware there are no outstanding crashing bugs in software.

there should also be a fix for the screen 'tearing' seen in 10.3.9 with some types of files-
this issue also seems to have dissapeared in 10.4.3

However, any Macs now purchased will suffer the same issues.
newly purchased macs are entirely different. they have to run tiger. no choice whatsoever.
and pci-express is entirely new and completely new.
we have only just got the hardware to begin evaluating issues.
apple is still making substantial changes to the graphics drivers.
10.4.4 is substantially different from 10.4.3

for example by new quad g5 with 4500 had random kernel panics....
no clue at all.

1) Does Catv3.3.1 mean that we can upgrade to 10.3.9?
you will have to try a single machine. and test it. and build show confidence over time.
report whether issues have been fixed for you.
there is some new stuff for manually adjusting the refresh rate of the software in circumstances that used to cause problems.



2) Do we need to stick with ATI 4.5.1 or upgrade to current 4.5.7?
ati drivers- i have absolutely no clue at all what any of these drivers ever change or fix or break. there is no publicly available information on the interaction between these and apple software.
what always happens with these things is they fix things, and they break things at the same time.
myself- i always try to have to latest drivers installed.
there is a gigantic testing matrix with all the stuff, and its all subtle and difficult to spot.

3) If only running MacOS10.3.9 (not 10.4.x) - is Catv3.3.1 still considered a BETA or a show safe bug fix?
that is what this process is all about.
that is something we need to determine together with you.
and if there are more issues we resolve them as quickly as possible.