ATI has received a lot of bad press for its negligent HDCP branding of its products as it has indicated that basically all of the manufacturer’s video cards sports the HDCP technology, which they in fact does not. Recently this resulted in a law suit by consumers from San Jose and how this will develop remains to be seen. ATI has continued with its focus on multimedia capable video cards though and two its partners will now have cards ready with HDMI outputs. They’ve started to test manufacture their HDMI cards and only have the final tests to do before they can launch the cards.
The two manufacturers that are about to launch HDMI cards are, according to The Inquirer, PowerColor and Sapphire where both are aiming for a lunch within two weeks. Both manufacturers are going for X1600 Pro-based cards and there are no plans for any faster “HDMI-cards” anytime soon, but X1600 Pro should be more than enough for most HTPC and Media Center systems where HDMI is the most interesting feature. Both cards will support HDCP, a small, perhaps even tiny, revenge for ATI. NVIDIA has no retail cards with HDMI support ready today and has made no statement regarding this either.
Sapphire’s X1600 Pro HDMI has appeared earlier in the news and soon we will see more of what Sapphire and PowerColor have been cooking.
