14 DAY TRIAL // New details regarding ATI's upcoming and long-debated mainstream HD-DVD and Blu-Ray playback solution have already emerged all over the Internet and state that the manufacturer's AVIVO video processing engine will be integrated into every X1000 series graphics card supporting H.264 and VC-1 hardware accelerated decoding, informs Daily Tech.
Furthermore, the company's latest mainstream solution will probably feature, according to the scoops, video processing functions which will consist of a 40Mbps Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content decoding process, and also picture-in-picture features enabled by the Universal Video Decoder which will decode two video streams simultaneously.
"However, the mainstream X1300 and X1600 series only support hardware accelerated H.264 and VC-1 decoding up to resolutions of 720p. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks are typically encoded in 1080p with H.264 or VC-1. Hardware accelerated decoding of 1080p H.264 or VC-1 content is reserved for ATI's higher end X1800 and X1900 models only," reports Daily Tech.
However, it appears that ATI's Universal Video Decoder will work together with an RV516 based graphics core to create the RV550, which will include the mainstream products' standard features such as the clocks of the engine and core that will be of about 600 MHz and 800 MHz respectively. The RV550 graphics cards will have a 128-bit memory interface as well ad Dual-DVI and HDCP capabilities.
The prototypes of ATI's newest RV550 GPU will be available starting September, and the mass production is expected to start in late December.