ATI Avivo still promising more than it delivers?

[Bob Crabtree]

HEXUS.lifestyle's standing-on-a-high-horse specialist Bob Crabtree gives his jaundiced take on the latest developments with Avivo - ATI's much-touted, next-generation video decoding, encoding and deinterlacing technology

Today, you can have nourishing, toasted wholemeal bread with a smidgeon or two of caviar. And that's good, isn't it? But believe us when we tell you that, some time soon, things will far better still - with lashings of the black stuff spread on top. For some of you. Probably.

Call us cynical but that, we feel, is one way to interpret ATI's words and actions in recent months and up to the present relating to Avivo – the company's much-touted, next-generation video decoding, encoding and deinterlacing technology.

There's been a lot of Avivo-related bluster coming out of ATI for a good while and our recent hands-on using the first Avivo-enabled (but non-certified) drivers confirm this to be the case, so check out the hard facts that underlie this commentary - Rys's warts-and-all, and by-the-numbers, ATI Avivo Winter 2005 Update.

The commentary is here; Rys's ATI Avivo Winter 2005 Update is here.

[Syn]

Knowing that ATi release a driver each month i am not worried about any of its claims. To me the fact that they are trying is good enough for me. nVidia on the other hand is charging extra for such options and it shows no updates that might improve it.

ATi as a company might be rushing things but when your being kicked in the face by the media while trying as best as you can aint really a nice thing.

You guys do have a point and its all fair but to me a customer i happy to pay for such product even if i will have to wait few weeks for most options to be unlocked. Also it is only logical that X1800 cards will be the ones that use Avivo the best. But i think that as Avivo and R5XX generation is in its infancy we should delay in making our decisions.

Try and rejoice that ATi is giving you all this for free and not asking more for it and appreciate the things that they do.

[kempez]

But AVIVO works on nvidia cards too....

AVIVO on my 7800GTX 512mb does give slight quality increase and certainly is very fast

[Bob Crabtree]

It is true to say that a commentary piece such as this one does NOT take note of some of the larger issues - though, I'm not sure it should.

That said, I do very much think that the fact that ATI has monthly updates (or in the case of 2005 - 13 in one year) is something that is highly admirable and to be applauded.

In contast NVIDIA appears to make no commitment to end-users as to when, or if, it will ever release another device driver other than the most recent one.

Also, it is correct for Syn to point out that ATI, unlike Nvidia, isn't charging extra for this sort of stuff.

But, the beef I had was with the manner of how ATI went about what it did with Avivo, not with its aims or how I hope the final results will turn out.

Truth is, I'm agnostic - I'll give a good kicking to whoever I think deserves, and it just so happens that ATI came into range - in the same way that Craig Barrett, head honcho of Intel did recently.

Bob