NVIDIA sent out a press release announcing PureVideo HD, which  is designed for GeForce 7-series cards and represents a superset of NVIDIA's existing PureVideo video processing engine. The company touts PureVideo HD as a complete solution for Blu-ray and HD-DVD media playback, as it not only takes load away from the CPU by having the graphics card accelerate HD video rendering, but PureVideo HD-ready cards will also include High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support - a requirement to view HD media at full resolutions. NVIDIA says PCs without HDCP support will be forced to watch Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies at a quarter of their full resolution.

The next digital entertainment revolution is about to begin, with highly anticipated HD DVD and Blu-ray movies shipping this summer. These movies feature lifelike imagery with up to six times more visual detail than standard DVDs, but they can't be played with regular DVD drives. HD movies are encoded in new formats that require special HD optical drives, hardware acceleration, HDCP compatible displays, and new HD movie player software.

NVIDIA has the solution. PureVideo HD technology combines high-definition movie decode acceleration (using certain NVIDIA GeForce 7-series GPUs), HDCP circuitry and HD movie player integration to deliver cinematic-quality Blu-ray and HD DVD movie playback on a PC.