AMD trumpets HDTV-on-PC chip

AMD jumped into the hot TV-on-PC market Tuesday with the release of the ATI Theater HD 750 chip, which provides HDTV capabilities to desktop and mobile PCs. Announced today at the Computex mega-show in Taipei, Taiwan, the ATI Theater HD 750 has worldwide compatibility, being able to accept HDTV, DTV, and broadcast signals in …

[Jonathan]

meh title

'...Never Twice the Same Color, Something Essentially Contrary to the American Method, and Picture Always Lousy...'

You cynical b@st'rds :-P

[YumDogfood]

marketing

So they are selling a STB chip into the PC space? Genius. Especially as the transcoder is not even in hardware, unlike sling (from the link):

5 Third party software required for video transcoding capabilities.

6 Trans-coding done on the CPU.

[The Cube]

PAL is Perfection At Last

As PAL waited for everyone else to get it wrong first, honestly, what sort of septic muppet thinks that separating chroma and brightness signals for processing without embedding reference clocks to allow correctly phased reassembly is a good idea?

If they were working in computing they would be writing Visual Basic .net applications that needed Oracle databases and moaning about how much Java contractors get paid.

[Beau]

PAL. was still better

OK. So Phase Alternated Line had its problems, but it still beat the shit out of the other 2 for picture quality.

Paris, because she makes a good picture on any system!

[Dan Sheppard]

So what?

There'll still be nothing worth watching.

[Paul M]

Alternatively

Provocation ALlemande

[DRendar]

NTSC & PAL

It isn't just Never The Same Colour twice that makes the NTSC picture look terrible, its the lack of horizontal lines. Old PAL tellies might flicker a bit if you've got your face less than 1 foot from the screen, but I haven't done that since I was 8.

Even sat 12ft back from an average sized Yank telly you can still see huge gaping gaps between the scan lines.

I was in the US on a course a year or two back, and the picture quality on the cable I was getting on the 21" telly in my hotel room made me want to puke.

Having adverts interrupting the programs EVERY FRIGGING 5 MINUTES made me want to go on a killing spree. "Hi I'm Bob, Why don't you come on down to 'Bob's emporium of crap noone wants', and I'll give you a free Coronary Heart bypass!"

How the hell do they put up with it?

[Quantum]

What About Linux?

Yeah, the commercials are unbearable. That's why God gave us MythTV!

But I see nothing in the press release about Linux (Debian) support. nVidia is light-years ahead of ATI when it comes to hardware accel.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Quantum

> That's why God gave us MythTV!

Well actually Isaac gave us MythTV but thye're both biblical sounding so that's OK :D

[tony trolle]

LINES

the HD channels on Yank TV are at 1080 (1040) lines

[DRendar]

re: LINES

Yes but that isn't NTSC - that's HDTV.