As more and more Microsoft Media Center systems appear in households around the world, hordes of people will be packing away their old stereo equipment and replacing the entire home entertainment system with a high quality Media Center PC. ATI currently offers an industry leading range of multi-media solutions. Turning an existing system into a media hub could involve the simple addition of a Theatre 550 Pro based TV tuner card or an HDTV Wonder card (if in an area that can receive free over the air high definition signals). Those of you that are looking for a video card with full multimedia capabilities you may want to try the Cadillac of solutions; one of their new lineup of All-In-Wonder video cards. Not only are these cards unmatched in multi-media functionality they also provide an excellent gaming experience. Additionally, thanks to ATI's robust display focused feature set, AVIVO technology is able to render games more precisely at higher screen resolutions and can connect to a plethora of display types. Currently the All in Wonder 2006, X1800XL and X1900 feature ATI's AVIVO technology.

All of these new products offer users the ability to capture stills and record an incoming video source virtually eliminating the need for a Digital Recording Device like a TIVO or DVR (or Sky + if based in Europe) that cable or Satellite providers are currently renting or selling. These new ATI products also provide a superior 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) compared to older lower quality 9 or 10-bit analog to digital converters used in previous generations.

So that’s the basic gist of AVIVO, let us now look at it in a little more detail.

AVIVO and the Video Pipeline:

Before we can go any further we are going to need to gain a better understanding of the Video pipeline and how it fits into the world of AVIVO enhanced technology. As soon as a signal is received by a multi-media capable device like a Television/cable box combination or a PC equipped with a TV tuner the Video Pipeline immediately steps up and becomes involved in the processing of the source signal.

Capture:

The video capture process consists of the following stages. You start by receiving an incoming video signal through the capture device. Then store the source data on the hard drive before processing it and outputting the end result to a display device. (TV screen or Monitor) If the source signal is an analog one, the capture device will have to tune to and then demodulate (separates the video signal from the carriers signal...such as a TV Station) the signal before it can begin encoding it. Once they have been separated, it can begin to compress and digitize the captured video signal.

If the source is a digital signal it has previously been compressed and is ready to be decoded before post processing and being output to a display. ATI adds to the capture process by implementing a subset of features that go hand and hand during the capture process. When it comes to analog capture devices ATI's new technologies include Automatic Gain Control, 12-bit analog to digital conversion, 3D Comb filtering and hardware noise reduction.

Automatic Gain Control:

Since the introduction of the Theater 550 Pro, ATI TV/Video capture devices have used an automatic gain control feature. This feature gives their devices the ability to examine the incoming signal and determine if there is any gain control required. If it detects any type of flawed video signal, the device can dynamically boost the gain to a level that will provide a rich and vibrant level of brightness and color contrast before passing the signal on to the remainder of the video pipeline.

All new 12-bit analog to digital converters:

When it comes to convert an analog signal to a digital one making sure only the highest quality data is being passed further down the video pipeline is critical. If the analog data is not converted correctly anything missed during the conversion process is lost and can’t be retrieved. This lost data could be responsible for less than perfect conversion throughout the remainder of the video pipeline. ATI's new 12-bit analog to digital converters examine the source data right down to the finest details. This intensive analysis helps to ensure that only the best possible data gets any further along the video pipeline.

3D Comb filtering:

Comb filtering is nothing new as it has been an important part of television picture quality for ages. Broadcast video signals contain two major parts, the luminance and chrominance. Comb filtering is a pre-processing step that is used to separate the color and brightness from any incoming video signal when these two items are input together. Composite video signals are an example of a source signal that packages the color and brightness together. When looking at video certain areas that contain greater level of detail will require more attention. The use of high quality comb filtering will definitely increase the quality of the output video signal. One factor that Comb filtering concentrates on is what is referred to as Dot Crawl. If you look very closely at a video stream provided through a composite video connection you may see what looks like a series of moving dots around the sharp edges where contrasting colors meet. This problem is virtually eliminated with the Theatre 550 Pro. The 3D Comb filter used on ATI's new AVIVO ready products uses a 3D Motion adaptive comb filter that is based on technology that they use in high quality digital televisions.

Hardware Noise Reduction:

ATI has added a hardware based noise reduction system to their line of AVIVO ready products. As many of you will know, noise in a video signal is not a good thing. Noise adds snow or a grainy look to your video signal. This noise or interference can ruin the video viewing experience by distracting focus from the content we are trying to enjoy. Another downside of unwanted noise in a video signal is the larger file sizes. This noise adds actual data to the video file which causes the size to increase. This also adds to the total amount of bandwidth required to view your video. By adding noise reduction at the hardware level ATI better prepare the video signal for the encoding stage.

Encoding:

Encoding of a video signal follows the capture portion of how video signal travels through the video pipeline. It is often referred to as the compression of a captured video signal. This compression involves changing the source video signal to a format such as MPEG-2. When dealing with a captured digital video signal this data may require transcoding. So what is transcoding? Transcoding involves the decoding of a digitally captured video signal and the conversion of the decoded signal into a different format. This is required whenever we change the original format to something that is going to be viewed on a different type of media device like a PDA, PSP, or video capable cell phone. When the encoding of a video signal is done correctly the end result will be high quality video that is optimized and puts less strain on the systems CPU/VPU.

With ATI’s new AVIVO technology encoding is supported at two levels. ATI’s TV Wonder Elite and HDTV Wonder have onboard compression hardware and the AVIVO enabled integrated display devices and graphics cards (X1300/X1600/X1800/X1900) have hardware compression and transcoding capabilities built into the cards GPU. With these features included on the X1XX lineup we should notice a big decrease in CPU usage when playing back (or in some cases, encoding) video files.

Decoding:

Once into the decoding phase, all of the compressed video captures are now decompressed and re assembled into actual moving images. During decoding there is no set in stone method for users to follow. The video signals depend on which video codec is chosen during the decoding phase. Once a particular codec has been chosen it will follow steps specific to that particular codec. After the decoding process is completed the only real way to determine the efficiency or quality of your decoding is to do a comparison of how much CPU utilization takes place during playback. A good decode job will produce lower CPU usage later on. Once the decoding is complete the video signals are then passed onto the post processing stage.

Thanks to AVIVO technology, ATI’s VPU provides dedicated blocks for the video decode stage. This along with the ability to support 3rd party codec’s leaves ATI with a very flexible solution. When HD-DVD and Blu-ray are accepted as the standard, AVIVO enabled hardware will be in high demand.

Post Processing:

Now we have reached the final stage (post processing) prior to outputting the finished product to a display. It’s at this stage that accurate reproduction of the source video signal is critical. For example: we are going to be displaying an interlaced television signal on a non interlaced PC screen, then the post processing stage is critical in order to offer a high quality result.

When compared to decoding which follows a specific step by step process, post processing results unfortunately are totally subjective to the end users own perception of what is quality and what is not. There is however certain steps that can be followed to increase your odds of producing a high quality finished product such as de-interlacing and the use of what is referred to as 3:2 pulldown.

Display:

There are two specific parts to the display process. The first being what type of connection device you use to and the actual display type that is being used for viewing your video files.

The AVIVO Display Engine is made up of two symmetrical display pipelines. These pipelines make sure that the video signal that needs to be outputted is best matched to whatever display device is being used to view the finished product.

Depending on the specific display device used for the video playback there are several variables that have to be considered as different devices output things in different methods. Here are some of the things that need to be considered.

1 Screen Resolution and aspect ratio (Standard 4:3, Widescreen 16:9 or 16:10)
2 Color Space (RGB or YPrPb)
3 The depth of the Color (bits per color)
4 Gamma Response

Most current graphic cards have two outputs. In many cases there is an Analog D-Sub (15 pin) an S-Video or Composite port as well as a digital DVI or HDMI port which will provide a superior quality signal output. The choice of which port often is determined by the monitor used to view video content. If it is an older type display or even one of many entry level LCD’s, you may only have the option to use the Analog D-Sub connector. This may be adequate in many cases but if the graphics card and monitor have a DVI port it is strongly recommended to make use of the digital port.

Additionally, for European consumers ATI’s latest All-In-Wonder products feature a scart output for both pictures and sound.

Now that we have looked at the Video Pipeline and how it relates to ATI’s AVIVO technology, we will take a closer look at some of their AVIVO enabled hardware. We are going to look at the AIW X1800XL and the TV Wonder Elite.