NVIDIA Corp. officially announced this week its PureVideo technology, originally referred as Programmable Video Processor, that is meant to improve video performance and quality on personal computers equipped with graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce 6-series graphics processors.

Key features of PureVideo include:

• High-definition MPEG-2 Hardware Acceleration. A dedicated 16-way vector processor enables smooth playback of HD video with minimal CPU usage.
• High-definition WMV Hardware Acceleration. Programmable support of the newest format enabled by Microsoft Windows Media Player and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 for fluid playback of WMV and WMV HD content.
• High-quality Real-time Video Recording. An advanced motion-estimation engine makes it possible to record in real-time without a loss in quality.
• Spatial/Temporal Adaptive De-Interlacing. Experience interlaced content from satellite, cable, and DVD feeds in full detail and without jagged edges or artifacts.
• 3:2 Pull-down Correction and “Bad Edit” Correction (only on GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6600 graphics chips). Restore video to its original 24fps film format to experience a crystal clear picture, frame after frame.
• Flicker-free Multi-stream Scaling. High-quality 4-tap by 5-tap scaling maintains image detail, even when scaling a small video to a large area of the screen.
• Display Gamma Correction. Automatic format detection adjusts the color quality of video playback so that it is not too dark, overly bright or washed out, regardless of the display.

NVIDIA unveiled its Programmable Video Processor in mid-April, along with the GeForce 6800-series of graphics processing units. The company, however, did not enable the PVP from the beginning and then even said the PVP of the GeForce 6800 was less advanced than that of the GeForce 6600, claiming that the former did not support HD WMV acceleration.

X-bit labs can confirm that the PureVideo technology works on the GeForce 6800- and GeForce 6600-series graphics cards available in our laboratory, provided that special drivers and NVIDIA DVD Decoder is used. However, at least some NVIDIA GeForce 6800-series graphics cards for AGP bus require a BIOS update. Please keep in mind that different BIOSes are needed for graphics cards with different PCB designs.