[Daveyiv2k1]

If you like to watch HD video's on your computer and own an Nvidia graphics card these new drivers may be of interest to you. They add the long awaited support of H.264 hardware decoding on the Geforce 6 and 7 series GPUs. Check it out here. Keep in mind that it is a beta driver release.

Release Highlights:

Updated March 3, 2006: Updated driver to include support for GeForce 6800 GS AGP.
-Adds support for GeForce 7300 GS and GeForce 7300 LE GPUs.
-New NVIDIA PureVideo features and enhancements. Please visit the NVIDIA PureVideo website for more information on PureVideo technology and system requirements.
-Support for high definition H.264 hardware decode acceleration on -GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs.
-Support for high definition MPEG-2 inverse telecine.
-Support for high definition MPEG-2 spatial temporal de-interlacing.
-Adds mixed vendor support for NVIDIA SLI.
-TV-Out/HD-out support for NVIDIA SLI.
-Added support for VSync on Direct3D games when running NVIDIA SLI.
-Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 2.0 support
-For a full list of fixed and known issues please view the Release Notes.

[ivanolo]

On a related note:

CyberLink Corp. said Monday that it has released a new version of its PowerDVD MPEG-4 AVC Pack, which supports hardware acceleration using Nvidia's latest graphicss chips.

The new H.264 DxVA decoder in CyberLink's MPEG-4 AVC pack for PowerDVD will provide owners of Nvidia GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 series graphics cards with hardware support for CyberLink's PureVideo H.264 technology, the company said. The hardware support will also cut CPU utilization in half when playing back high-definition H.264 video, it said.
ADVERTISEMENT

The new Nvidia-accelerated software will be released this March, CyberLink said. It will be demonstrated at the CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany later this month.

"After our successful cooperation this year at CES, CyberLink is working with Nvidia to give PowerDVD users accelerated high-definition H.264 video playback," said Alice H. Chang, chief executive of CyberLink, in a statement. "As the leading provider of high-definition playback solutions, CyberLink cooperates closely with graphics card makers ensuring that their users can always enjoy the newest video technology in the digital home."

[Mr. Ali]

anything for ati? 9700pro?

[ivanolo]

I think only the last 2 generations of video chips from ATi and nVidia have hardware H.264 acceleration....

[funkgab]

h.264, do you think it will be obsolete?

[ivanolo]

Isn't it all the rage these days? I believe the video iPod uses it, Nero has an encoder for it, part of the HDTV specification calls for it, and both Blu-ray and HD-DVD use it. Perhaps 10 years from now it will....

[Eps]

So I bought my mom a 6200 something I believe I'll have to check it out tomorrow to be exact. The box said on the front it had HD support. Then a month or so ago its in the news that these cards do not support HD despite saying so. Is this what it was missing and this will now enable it? I am not worried about it in any case as we do not have HD anything.