I am a huge fan of H.264. At least, I am a huge fan of the theory of H.264. See, my home system isn’t exactly state of the art and well, H.264 is sort of processor intensive. I have never been able to playback any of the HD trailers from the Quicktime website. The worst part is, my buddy with a 6 month old (relatively new) Powerbook G4 can't play them back either. Now I realize the new core duo is solving this problem, and I could wax strong about Apple computers all day, but that isn't the point.

The real point is Cyberlink is attempting to free the processor of some of its H.264 load. The Taiwan based company has been working to put some of the burden on the backs of Nvidia. The New Cyberlink Decoder, called the PowerDVD MPEG-4 AVC Pack, works with Nvidia Graphics cards featuring PureVideo technology. It offloads video processes to the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) reducing CPU utilization by up to 50% when playing high-definition H.264. The new MPEG-4 AVC pack is due for release early this month.

I realize this technology isn't going to help my aging system play HD, but at least going forward the playback burden is heading where it belongs. Graphics cards are so powerful these days they can easily handle more than we give them. I'm glad to see someone (besides Apple) is putting them to work.