AMD trumpets HDTV-on-PC chip
Worldwide acronym love
Computex AMD jumped into the hot TV-on-PC market Tuesday with the release of the ATI Theater HD 750 chip, which provides HDTV capabilities to desktop and mobile PCs.
Announced today at the Computex mega-show in Taipei, Taiwan, the ATI Theater HD 750 has worldwide compatibility, being able to accept HDTV, DTV, and broadcast signals in the analog NTSC, PAL, SECAM, and digital ATSC, ClearQAM, and DVB-T formats. AMD has also tossed FM radio into the mix.
The chip can also convert TV shows recorded onto PCs into H.264, AVI, MPEG, DivX, WMV, and MPEG4 files for playback on portable media devices. AMD says that PC users will be able to schedule TV recording and watch, pause, and rewind live TV using Windows Vista Media Center, Windows XP Media Center Edition, and Windows 7.
AMD promises that the new chip will provide "Stunning visual detail...with new advanced video processing technologies and signal reception features producing a crisp, vivid and breath-taking picture, high color quality and high fidelity" due to something their marketing folks have dubbed "Intelligent Image Enhancement."
The ATI Theater HD 750 will be available in PCI, PCI Express, and USB implementations from manufacturers "later this year," according to AMD.
HDTV on PCs is apparently a hot topic at Computex. In his optimistic keynote at the show, Intel exec Sean Maloney said that HD video is growing at an "incredible rate" and promised that the company's Lynnfield processor, scheduled to appear in the second half of this year, will deliver "stunning HD" to desktop PCs. ®
Bootnote
Those of you who haven't studied broadcast engineering may be unfamiliar with the acronyms NTSC, SECAM, and PAL, which identify the three most-popular analog television standards. Those who have worked with them know that they stand for Never Twice the Same Color, Something Essentially Contrary to the American Method, and Picture Always Lousy.
COMMENTS
@Quantum
> That's why God gave us MythTV!
Well actually Isaac gave us MythTV but thye're both biblical sounding so that's OK :D
What About Linux?
Yeah, the commercials are unbearable. That's why God gave us MythTV!
But I see nothing in the press release about Linux (Debian) support. nVidia is light-years ahead of ATI when it comes to hardware accel.
NTSC & PAL
It isn't just Never The Same Colour twice that makes the NTSC picture look terrible, its the lack of horizontal lines. Old PAL tellies might flicker a bit if you've got your face less than 1 foot from the screen, but I haven't done that since I was 8.
Even sat 12ft back from an average sized Yank telly you can still see huge gaping gaps between the scan lines.
I was in the US on a course a year or two back, and the picture quality on the cable I was getting on the 21" telly in my hotel room made me want to puke.
Having adverts interrupting the programs EVERY FRIGGING 5 MINUTES made me want to go on a killing spree. "Hi I'm Bob, Why don't you come on down to 'Bob's emporium of crap noone wants', and I'll give you a free Coronary Heart bypass!"
How the hell do they put up with it?
