Avivo Tech to Power Home Theatre Laptops?

Internet Service Providers and laptop manufacturers are rubbing their hands together, like a red-blooded man over a steak, at what ATI’s Avivo technology has in store for future multimedia notebooks. Avivo may soon make it possible to get better video playback on your trusty tiny laptop by integrating the same technology that’s in your HDTV into your computer. That means you’ll be able to watch a movie right off the Web-and enjoy it-instead of relying on your DVD player for crisp, accurate images.

This “home theater experience” could be delivered by ATI’s Avivo technology. In the works for laptops, Avivo would build upon ATI’s Xilleon and Theater Digital TV technology that’s in today’s televisions, the ones with the four and five digit price tags. In simple English, what these devices do for your television is tighten and clarify images and text, while getting the dull out of colors.

In your laptop, Avivo would revolutionize how the computer reads its video input. Currently, laptops have one video signal. Avivo would use a 3D Comb to separate that one strand of video into a color and brightness strand, allowing control of each independently. The 3D Comb would also filter out the grainy effects of a weak signal and tighten up the image.

Many notebooks today already have a built-in tuner, so ATI’s Avivo is the much-awaited next big step-to allow a picture out of that video feed that’s actually worth viewing! However, it’s still much-awaited. You’re looking at a year before it reaches the market.

But when it does, you may just get the urge to toss your five-digit-price-tag TV out the window. OK, maybe not. But your laptop will definitely become a bigger part of your home theater, while notebook manufacturers will make money off new sales, and ISP providers will role out bigger, better bandwidth packages to manage the increased video downloads.

By Matthew Brodsky

Monday, September 26, 2005