ATI’s R520 to Feature Hardware Accelerated HD Content Playback
 

ATI Technologies said Thursday its “forthcoming RADEON graphics processor”, which is known under R520 code-name, would feature hardware acceleration of H.264 Advanced Video Codec, which is to be used with forthcoming HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The first public demonstration of the capability is promised to be scheduled for Computex Taipei 2005.

“ATI is transforming the PC video landscape by leading the industry adoption of Blu-ray and HD DVD on the PC. This new innovation builds upon ATI's unrivaled video and display technologies,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, PC Business Unit, ATI Technologies.

H.264 compression technology allows High Definition videos in 1280x720 or 1920x1080 resolutions to fit into 8Mbps – 10Mbps bit rate, whereas typical MPEG-2 consumes 15Mbps – 20Mbps for this type of quality. This increased compression efficiency is highly computationally demanding, therefore graphics hardware assistance is crucial for real-time decoding of high bit-rate video. Furthermore, graphics hardware designers should keep in mind that demand for increased computational resources means higher energy consumption by the chips, which is not a good news for mobile computers with battery time constraints.

more @ http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...526100319.html

that sounds good :)