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Low end ATI cards add HD DVD, Blu-ray playback

23 January 2008 18:33 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 3 comments

Earlier this morning, at an event in Beijing, the video card maker ATI announced that they will be incorporating Blu-ray and HD DVD playback support into their upcoming low end video cards.

ATI confirmed that they had added DirectX 10.1 support to two new Radeon division cards at the lower end of the price spectrum, namely the HD 3400 model which should retail for as low as $49 USD. The other card is the HD 3600 which is essentially the same card just with more transistors, a significant 378 million versus 181 million.

Despite their relatively low specs, both feature the on-board support for decoding Blu-ray and HD DVD video at full 1080p resolution. This alone should make the cards very appealing to media center PC builders on a budget.

ATI also confirmed that the 3600 card will not sell for over $100 USD retail and continues in ATI's shift into value priced products.

View ATI Radeon video cards in our Hardware Section

Asus Radeon HD 2900 XT (512MB / PCIe)
Not rated yet

Asus Radeon HD 2600 XT (256MB / PCIe)
Not rated yet

Asus Radeon HD 2600 Pro (256MB / PCIe / GDDR3)
Not rated yet

Asus Radeon HD 2400 XT (256 MB / PCIe)
Not rated yet

All ATI cards

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Discuss this article!
OzMick (Senior Member) 23 January 2008 19:29
I'm thinking they're that cheap because they've been subsidised. Subsidised to enforce DRM in hardware. Unless someone can guarantee that is not the case, I'd avoid these cards... [ + quote]
atomicxl (Newbie) 23 January 2008 22:22
Ummm... all cards that decode HD-DVD/Blu-Ray have DRM built in. You need that HDCP thing to send it out over HDMI. ATI doesn't even make a directshow filter or codec so you don't have to worry about them banning stuff. I have a HD26000 and it doesn't block me from doing anything. Although the 3rd party plugin that uses the hardware uses the same CPU as CoreAVC which is 100% CPU based... go figure. If you're building a cheap media center PC, these cards will be godsend. Torrents laugh at the format war. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 18 February 2008 20:47
This should become standard on graphic cards very soon hence why ati is making the transition quicker than everyone else soo they can fix the bugs sooner rather than later. [ + quote]