AMD-ATI prep DRM infected HD tuner for Vista

ATI MAKES THE BEST TV Tuner chips. In terms of hardware features, of course. The Rage Theater 550 chip won many awards in its two-year long career, but there's a successor on the way.

The successor isn't just a regular new number behind the brand name, though. The upcoming product is geared towards the HD market, and it caters to Windows Vista Home editions. The tuner chip comes with an array of security technologies - in fact, the company is keeping such a tight loop around the product that many of the features inside are marked "special". So, we're talking about two products, one internal and one external.

The internal part is extremely interesting to several major OEM players, since they lack the check-box features in order to sway customers with it.

I have mentioned security technologies. I have no idea what AMD ATI is thinking, but the project is being developed with "special" firmware, a "special" BIOS, "special" testing programmes and even encryption schemes. There are also several hardware security features inside the units - we are not aware yet which ones, but as soon as we learn more, we'll report it.

We just hope having this number of DRM features won't put the speed of a 100-meter sprint machine in a "special" Olympics category. Pardon my political incorrectness.

Bear in mind that the management of the company decided to launch the product at Yuletide no matter in what state Windows Vista is in. One of the possibilities would be that the product is shipped with a DVD containing a beta version or a release candidate of Vista itself. Unless of course, the new management decides to postpone the product or make a base-line driver that works in Windows XP. And hopefully, shuts all the DRM out.

Anyway, you've read this here first. As usual. µ