Nvidia PureVideo

Nvidia PureVideo is a hardware feature designed to offload video decoding processes and video post-processing from a computer's CPU hardware to Nvidia's GPU hardware series GeForce 6 and later, GeForce M series (formerly known as GeForce Go); and Nvidia Quadro series. PureVideo is designed to work with media playback software, it can also be used for the decoding process of transcoding software. Nvidia's proprietary device drivers for Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD are PureVideo-enabled; with the appropriate (PureVideo-enabled) application software, the Nvidia driver will automatically use whatever hardware-acceleration is available on the Nvidia display-adapter.

All software HD DVD/Blu-ray players, as well as most software DVD players, are PureVideo-enabled. Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center also supports Nvidia's PureVideo technology. Nvidia also sells its own PureVideo decoder software (which is a source of confusion, as Nvidia's decoder is not required and not used by third-party players), which serves as a DVD player with advanced post-processing capabilities. The degree of PureVideo's capabilities varies by generation.

On 2008-11-14 Nvidia released a beta version of a closed-source device driver and open-source API called VDPAU with PureVideo support for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.

PureVideo HD

PureVideo HD (see "naming confusions" below) is a label which identifies Nvidia graphics boards certified for HD......
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