Page 10 - Avivo HD #1

Avivo revision 2 -> Avivo HD technology

AMD has tagged HD to the product name to designate the entire lineups Avivo HD technology, for a good reason.

I've been preaching for a while now that we see the living room entertainment coming to the PC more and more, in a very fast fashion. One of the most popular things we've noticed here in Europe has to be HDTV and everything related to it. The trend really started last year already and with the help of Blu-ray and HD-DVD it's coming in faster and quite frankly, thank God for that, as watching content in HD is simply fantastically breathtaking.

HDTV - HDMI - HDCP - HD-Ready terminology explained

Okay, before we dive into Avivo HD let's have a brief chat about what exactly acronyms like HDMI and HDCP mean. The HDTV market continues to heat up, and who has not heard about terms like HD Ready? Let's run through some terms. HDTV stands for High Definition Television, the current image standard is know as Standard Definition. The high definition format uses upto 1080 lines to make up the picture you see on your TV compared to 576 for the current standard, HD will also be broadcasted in widescreen 16:9 format rather than the conventional 4:3 format. This will make for a truly cinematic experience.

Very blunt: HD = More lines = more pixels = better picture quality

In simple terms the image you will see with HD will have vastly improved image detail and color reproduction.

HDMI means High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It is a new kind of digital audio and video connector that will replace all connectors currently used by DVD players, TV sets and video monitors. The big idea here is that we should all use a single cable instead of several cables when connecting your DVD player to your TV set, for example. Interesting fact: HDMI is similar to DVI with three exceptions; HDMI is a much smaller connector (it pretty much looks like an USB connector), HDMI utilizes copy protection called HDCP (high definition copy protection) and finally; HDMI carries multi channel digital audio. HDMI, like DVI, is ALL-digital therefore picture quality is perfect from source to display.

HDMI also implements a copy-protection mechanism called HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection). First off... from now on, all series 2000 cards are HDCP compatible as the much needed crypto chip is embedded into the core logic of the card. Why the need for it ? Well ... with Vista when you want to playback HDCP content (movies) on your monitor, the resolution could be dumbed down or even worse if your monitor, content and graphics card do not have a HDCP (content protection) handshake.

It's like this: Your screen will go black during playback if you do not have an HDCP encoder chip working on the graphics card. So close to the cooler you'll notice a small EEPROM slash CryptoROM doing that magic for you. Galaxy included it on these boards. Mind you that if you like to playback media files with a HDCP ready graphics card, you'll also need a HDCP compatible monitor. (Hey, don't look so angry. Don't shoot the messenger!).

So, a HD Ready television will have either a DVI (Digital Video Interface) or HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface). Both connections provide exceptional quality. HDMI is often referred to as the digital SCART cable as it also provides audio. DVI supplies picture only, separate cables are needed for audio. Both HDMI and DVI support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) which will be a requirement for protected content.