ATI's upcoming R520 graphics core will feature H.264 video hardware acceleration, this is the video format used by the next-generation Blu-ray and HD DVD discs.
H.264 compression technology allows High Definition videos in 1280x720 or 1920x1080 resolutions to fit into 8Mbps – 10Mbps bit rate, whereas typical MPEG-2 consumes 15Mbps – 20Mbps for this type of quality. This increased compression efficiency is highly computationally demanding, therefore graphics hardware assistance is crucial for real-time decoding of high bit-rate video.
