Ever since the past generation of graphics cards NVIDIA did something rather clever, they made the GPU an important factor in en/decoding video signals.

PureVideo has evolved, yet in my opinion NVIDIA made a critical mistake that to date I can not comprehend. Here we buy a 500 or 600 USD graphics card and then to use of what I think really is great functionality and additional value to your graphics card, they require you to buy the PureVideo software suite for another 20 USD. Absolutely silly.

Two weeks ago I spoke with someone from NVIDIA's PureVideo development team and astonishingly enough they did admit to have messed up in that choice. The future for PureVideo is going to be a little bit different, you'll see more and more integration of this software suite into DVD software. I can tell you that NVIDIA already is working with the programmers of WinDVD for example the integrate PureVideo into their software. One piece of software that has PureVideo at default integrated is TheaterTek.

What I'd really like to see is the actual software integrated into titles like PowerDVD or even better, standard in the ForceWare driver where it belongs.

What are the key advantages of PureVideo? In my vision two key factors are a big advantage. To offload the CPU by allowing the GPU to take over a huge sum of the workload. HDTV decoding through for example TS (Transport Stream) file can be extremely demanding for a CPU. These puppies can go to 20 Mbit/sec easily as HDTV streams offer high-resolution playback in 1280x720p or even 1920x1080p. To offload that big task for the bigger part to the graphics core you give the CPU way more headroom to do other stuff. The combination of these factors offer you stutter-free high quality and high resolution media playback. All standard HDTV resolutions of course are supported, among them the obvious 480p, 720p and 1080i modes (Progressive/Interlace). New in the the Series 75 ForceWare driver is something I've been waiting on for quite some time now, 2-2 pull down which converts 24 frames per second towards 50 frame per second PAL.

I stated that for me personally there are two important factors, one offloading the CPU but do not forget another very important key factor, Image Quality. PureVideo can offer a large amount of options that'll increase the IQ of playback. This can be managed with a wide variety of options. Obviously NVIDIA has some interesting filters available in the PureVideo suite, we won't talk in depth on them but think of features like advanced de-interlacing, which can greatly improve image quality while playing back that DVD, MPEG2, TS file (just some examples). Next to that stuff like color corrections should not be forgotten. All major media streams will be supported by NVIDIA with PureVideo. Small sidenote, High Definition H.264 acceleration, which will become a big, new and a preferred standard is also supported.

Today's test subject, a Pioneer 435 XDE 43" Plasma screen, HD ready and comes with HDMI connector.