ATI Launches ALL-IN-WONDER® Encode, First Software MPEG2 Encoder For Media Center PCs

(Auszug aus der Pressemitteilung)

MUNICH, GERMANY – May 30, 2003 – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT) has launched ALL-IN-WONDER® Encode, a software MPEG2 encoder for PCs running Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center Edition. MPEG2 encoding is absolutely central to the function of a Media Center PC and has previously been accomplished using dedicated hardware on an add-in card, because software based decoding was believed to be too slow. However, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) can now get the same or better performance from ATI’s ALL-IN-WONDER Encode software. This saves them about $50 per PC, reduces complexity and frees up a PCI slot.

ALL-IN-WONDER Encode is currently available with ATI’s highly acclaimed ALL-IN-WONDER® range of combined graphics and TV in/out boards. The combination is the ideal solution for Media Center PCs because an OEM using ALL-IN-WONDER Encode and an ALL-IN-WONDER board saves the PCI slot by including all the TV in/out functionality with industry-leading graphics on a single AGP card.

“ATI’s ALL-IN-WONDER Encode will offer OEMs a way to reduce costs, differentiate their Media Center PC offerings and, perhaps most importantly, open the door to new and exciting form factors suitable for any room in the house,” said Kevin Eagan, general manager of the Windows eHome Division at Microsoft Corp.

“Software encoding is the way of the future,” said Godfrey Cheng, ATI’s Director of Multimedia Marketing. “It frees us to easily add encoding for other media formats in the future, without requiring OEMs to make expensive hardware changes.”

“ATI’s ALL-IN-WONDER Encode makes incredibly effective use of our Hyper-Threading Technology,” said Jason Ziller, Technology Initiatives Manager, Intel Corporation. “It proves, very dramatically, that Hyper-Threading Technology enables more and more of the heavy lifting to be done in software, allowing extensive adjustment and fine-tuning for specific applications.”

ALL-IN-WONDER Encode is tightly integrated with ATI’s VIDEOSOAP(tm), an application that cleans up the video before it is encoded. Not only does this improve picture quality, it allows MPEG2 compression to work much more effectively, enabling users to fit more video onto their hard drive.
Counterintuitively, the highly optimized ALL-IN-WONDER Encode video encoder actually uses a similar amount of CPU time to the hardware alternative. This means that users can record video and still surf the web, use office applications and so on, without the danger of degrading either experience. However, because ALL-IN-WONDER Encode is software, CPU utilization actually goes down as CPU speed goes up, something that is not true for the add-in-board. So although utilization is about the same for a 2.4 GHz Pentium® 4 (the likely entry point for Media Center systems), it gets better as faster CPUs are used, meaning that users will be able to run “heavier” applications – photo editing software, for example – with a Media Center PC equipped with ALL-IN-WONDER Encode than one with a hardware MPEG2 encoder.

ATI