ATI Theater 650 Pro announced

ATI announced the Theater 650 Pro video processor chip for superb analog and digital TV reception for PC users around the world. The new chip offers full hardware support for Personal Video Recording (PVR) backed by unrivaled Avivo image quality. Theater 650 Pro is supported by ATI's new Catalyst Media Center™ software which combines easy-to-use PVR capabilities with the ability to handle any signal, any time in any advanced format, from H.264 to DivX.

Theater 650 offers a new motion-adaptive 3D comb filter and noise reduction capabilities for better image quality. Additionally, Theater 650 Pro delivers worldwide digital TV support: ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) for United States, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea plus DVB-T (digital video broadcast terrestrial) for European DTV standards. Theater 650 Pro is designed for a variety of multimedia applications including SnapStream's Beyond TV, Media Center PCs, Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center Edition, and the forthcoming Microsoft Windows Vista™ operating system.

With a 125-channel TV tuner, Theater 650 Pro features hardware MPEG2 encoding to offload intensive PVR functions from the main computer processor to deliver extremely competitive performance. As a highly integrated chip, Theater 650 Pro includes a 12-bit worldwide video decoder, digital TV support, worldwide audio decoder, MPEG encoder, 3:2 pull-down, motion compensated noise reduction, edge enhancement, FM radio reception, hardware DRM engine, PCI/PCI-Express 1X bridge, and much more.

Theater 650 Pro supports Catalyst Media Center, ATI's next generation PC multimedia application. Catalyst Media Center delivers the best of ATI's long-standing expertise with a new interface that's easy even for the novice while offering enough core interaction to appeal to die-hard ATI multimedia fans.

Products featuring Theater 650 Pro will be available by early summer.