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The introduction of HD media, such as Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD and digital TV (DTV) broadcasting, gives consumers a vast array of media delivery choices for the viewing of high quality video content. As the PC becomes a central console for the digital home, consumers need powerful graphics processors capable of delivering outstanding and stunning picture quality when displaying content generated from the latest HD media formats such as H.264/MPEG-4 and DTV broadcast. With support for various HD formats and for all eighteen ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) and DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) television configurations, the Chrome 400 Series GPUs are capable of playing back the latest in high resolution home movies and DTV broadcast content.
At the heart of the S3 Graphics Chrome 400 Series Hi-Def? experience is the advanced ChromotionHD 2.0 programmable video engine that supports a wide selection of decoding and video acceleration hardware to provide high quality processing for today’s HD and streaming digital video content and codecs. The video engine incorporates full H.264 VLD bitstream decoding, VC-1/WMVTM HD (Windows Media Video-HD) iDCT with motion compensation (MC) decoding, and MPEG2-HD iDCT/MC hardware for HD decoding and playback.
Fully compatible with Microsoft DirectX-VA 2.0 media acceleration and supporting Protected Video Playback (PVP) of a wide range of video codecs, including Windows Media VideoTM 9 HD (WMV9-HD), MPEG-2 HD, VC-1, and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) the ChromotionHD 2.0 video engine brings true a Hi-Def experience to power efficient PCs. High definition playback of Blu-ray/HD-DVD discs is possible with lower CPU utilization. PVP support for HD Premium content includes PVP-UAB (User-Accessible Bus) and display output protection.
The specialized built-in hardware minimizes CPU utilization by offloading HD-compute-intensive tasks from the CPU to the GPU, which makes the decoding process more efficient and minimizes system power consumption. In addition, CPU offloading prevents those annoying artifacts and imperfections that might appear onscreen when using CPU-decoding-based video processing. ChromotionHD 2.0 also includes professional video editing capabilities with features such ArtisticLicense?, which can be used to create dramatic movie visuals and effects.
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