Further enhancing their PureVideo hardware acceleration technology, NVIDIA have issued out a press release which highlights that through support of new drivers, GeForce6 and especially 7 series cards will now handle high-definition video including hardware acceleration for content based on the advanced H.264 specification.

To learn more about the H.264 advanced video codec and its connection through PureVideo, read NVIDIA's announcement over at the NV press room.

PCInpact have also constructed an article with an analysis of H.264 HD playback using NVIDIA's 84.12 Forceware drivers and how it compares to ATI's cards.

H.264, which is also known as the Advanced Video Codec (AVC) specification or MPEG-4 Part 10, is one of the digital video codecs specified for the Blu-ray (BD) and High Definition DVD (HD DVD) formats. H.264 delivers two to three times the compression efficiency of the MPEG-2 standard, which is used to create current DVD videos. H.264 has been adopted by both the DVD Forum for HD DVDs and the Blu-ray Disc Association for Blu-ray Discs, and VC-1 has also been adopted by the DVD Forum for HD DVDs.