During movie playback you can access the Shaders menu through the pull down  menu (or just right mouse click on the movie playing). If you click SHARPEN, a shader program will be fired off at the graphics processor enabling pixel sharpening. In a seperate menu you can even configure shaders and their intensity (more/less sharpening etc).

Utilizing the shader engine of the graphics cards is the icing on top of the cake really, especially on bigger Full HD - HDTVs you want a little image sharpening or darker background. Observe the 'combine' function that is highlighted. Now, next screenshot please.

Of course it would a shame if you could only use one shader at a time, like image sharpening .. yet you love the de-noise function too. The software has a solve for that, you can select multiple shaders and run them simultaneous. Here's exactly where the integrated GPUs on motherboards will run out of computational power. But as stated a dedicated Radeon HD 4650 at 69 USD does a remarkable job, well worth the investment. And that's not different for the NVIDIA GeForce card either of course.

I advise you to select and combine the following shaders:

• Sharpen Complex or Edgde sharpen
• 16-235 -> 1-255 (will give you a nice dark screen)
• optionally de-interlace: but most movies are de-interlaced already

Once you've made your selection and added the shaders you would like to run, hit OK. And you are good to go.

Here's a fun tip, during playback use the following key combo: CTRL+P to enable and disable the pixel shaders, you'll spot the difference instantly.

So the last screenshot I wanted to show you is GPU usage during 1080P x.264 content playback.

Radeon HD graphics adapters allow us to monitor how much the GPU is stressed. We playback a 1080P movie, x.264; now we enabled two sharpening shaders and 16-235 -> 1-255. As you can see, the GPU is roughly 30% stressed at best. Depending on bitrate and shader selection this can vary a little of course. But this was some really heavy content.

Again you are looking at a Radeon HD 4650, passively cooled by the way.