ATI's Avivo Update : H.264 Acceleration

ATI have a new display driver, H.264 AVC HD decoder (Radeon X1000-series graphics boards) in conjunction with Cyberlink, and the first run out of their transcoding technology, all in a set of downloads that you'll get soon, the most important of which will show up in under a week.

AnandTech: Despite that warning from ATI, we had fewer problems with the Avivo Video Converter than we did with the beta H.264 decoder - it's actually in amazingly good shape for unsupported, pre-release software. The download is approximately 2.3MB zipped and you can get it here. Feel free to distribute it as you would like. Remember, it only works on ATI Radeon X1000 cards, but who knows - some of our more creative users may be able to find ways around that. The other item we didn't touch on that makes its appearance in the Catalyst 5.13 drivers is significantly improved video playback quality. ATI didn't have all of their Avivo ducks in a row when the X1000 series launched, but with Catalyst 5.13 they are looking to improve a number of the issues we noted in our first Avivo video quality article. We will be working on a follow-up to that piece in the near future to take a look at exactly what Catalyst 5.13 brings us in terms of video quality.

Hexus.net: The nailing of deinterlacing and image quality improvements to SD interlaced video are the most significant part of this Avivo update. Available on the 22nd of December 2005 as part of CATALYST 5.13, across all Radeon X1000-series graphics boards, those products are now best-in-class, by quite some margin, SD video processors. The availability of a H.264 ASP and AVC decoder for X1K boards via Cyberlink is also a significant step towards completing the promised Avivo feature set, and it'll be a free download from Cyberlink when it's finally released in the near future. With ATI railing on NVIDIA for their pay-for PureVideo DVD decoder for quite some time, that's more than welcome.

FiringSquad: Exactly 10 days ago, we brought you a video quality comparison between the ATI Radeon X800 XL using Catalyst 5.12, the NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, and the XGI Volari 8300. Using the HQV Benchmark DVD and true analog capture hardware, we showed you how ATI's legendary video quality was just that: a legend.

Nonetheless, FiringSquad's sources brought information of a new driver that would change things for ATI. Not simply a driver that would bring ATI ahead of XGI and NVIDIA and back to the top of the PC video processing world, but a driver that would bring ATI ahead of consumer electronics companies such as Sony, Samsung, Pixelworks, and Faroudja and put ATI hot on the tail of Gennum and Silicon Optix. Seeing that twelve drivers had already been released by ATI in 2005, most readers assumed that the new driver would have to come in January 2006 as Catalyst 6.1. ATI's Secret Santa decided to release this gift earlier to PC enthusiasts with a 13th driver release in 2005 and Oh, how things have changed!

All the articles seem to say one thing, that new the crop of ATi X1000 cards along with Avivo does and will beat any current video processing gpu. But its only a matter of time IMO, before nVidia get something new ready, such is the way in the IT world. Not to mention its FREE :-)