ATI
Technologies has announced that Microsoft has taken on its ATI H.264 for
its Xbox 360 HD DVD player add-on, which is due for launch around the holiday season later this
year. The H.264 format is one of three of HD DVD's approved Video codec's. The other two approved codec's include VC1 and MPEG2, which the current DVD-Video format currently uses.
According
to corporate vice president of the Xbox 360 hardware development, they expect consumers to be "blown away" with ATI's H.264 video playback capabilities along with the Xbox 360's graphics processing unit's additional features such as comb filtering and automatic gain control. Between the capabilities of the H.264 decoder and Xbox 360's GPU, they expect reduced video artefacts, a sharper, more true-to-life looking picture along with smoother playback.
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The full article can be read on ByteSector here. |
One thing that the external HD DVD player will need to feature would be a competitive price to standalone HD DVD players. On the other hand, as many consumers have their games console located in the living room, the use of an external DVD player is not really any more cumbersome than having a separate standalone DVD player, particularly if the add-on player will be much smaller than Toshiba's current beast or other HD DVD Players that may hit the market later this year. With the advanced video decoding features and post processing features between the ATI H.264 decoder and the Xbox 360, it would be interesting to see how the video compares with that from the current Toshiba player.
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Source: ByteSector
