It wasn’t long ago Radeon HD 2900 XT arrived and with it we all thought that the UVD circuits for decoding HD DVD and Blu-ray video was in place. Unfortunately it seems that this is not the case. There have been a couple of reports with some clear evidence of its absence and we can confirm that this is the case. AMD has said that UVD will only be available with the HD 2600 and HD 2400 series. Radeon HD 2900 XT lacks support for decoding HD video, “entropy decode” and “bitstream processing,” but Radeon HD 2900 XT basically sports the same capabilities as the much older X1950 cards have. A huge setback for AMD and AVIVO HD will have to wait until July when the remaining cards of the HD 2X00 series arrives.
