Andre Yoskowitz
23 Jan 2008 18:33
Earlier this morning, at an event in Beijing, the video card maker ATI announced that they will be incorporating Blu-ray and HD DVD playback support into their upcoming low end video cards.
ATI confirmed that they had added DirectX 10.1 support to two new Radeon division cards at the lower end of the price spectrum, namely the HD 3400 model which should retail for as low as $49 USD. The other card is the HD 3600 which is essentially the same card just with more transistors, a significant 378 million versus 181 million.
Despite their relatively low specs, both feature the on-board support for decoding Blu-ray and HD DVD video at full 1080p resolution. This alone should make the cards very appealing to media center PC builders on a budget.
ATI also confirmed that the 3600 card will not sell for over $100 USD retail and continues in ATI's shift into value priced products.