The Inquirer got their hands on an ATI X1600 HDMI card, which basically enables any PC with a spare PCB slot to be HD-enabled.
In a nutshell, they've tested it, and it works. Just like that.
It has both VGA and HDMI out connections, as well as SPDIF in for audio. It sounds as if you may need to mess about with the routing of your sound and graphics cards if you want to do anything spectacular with the audio, but for connecting to a HD digital TV, it's just plug in and go.
I don't have any more details about this card at present. If you want to see some photos, head over to the Inquirer article.
What sort of Printed Circuit Board (PCB) slot is needed?
The article itself is not exactly technical: "a small PCB" I'll do some digging.
There are some pictures at the inquirer link and it looks to be PCI, though it is still early and they may decide to make a PCI-X version too or instead of the PCI version.
Am I right in thinking this isn't a full blown graphics card and is meant more as an add-on to your existing graphics and sound cards in order to output over hdmi? That would be sweet.... :D
That seems to be the idea, Simon. More like an interface for any PC not already with a DVI or HDMI output.
I was joking btw, the article says that the gfx card is on a small PCB but your re-write says that it plugs into a PCB slot
Oops, that shows my lack of knowledge of PC innards.
PCI?
:)
Actually at second glance it looks like a PCIx x16 interface, the same kind used for regular graphics cards these days so you'll be needing a motherboard that has two pci x16 slots.
Unless you have the asrock like me which has one agp and one pci x16.
Uh PCIe not PCIx, sorry about that...
- wheres the edit button? :P