NVidia unveils advanced functions on newest cards

When the 6xxx series was launched, NVidia briefly mentionned that the chip could encode and decode some video formats. 6 months later, the newest Windows drivers finally unleash some of those functions.
The marketing name of these functions is "PureVideo". They allow MPEG 1, 2, 4 and Windows Media hardware decoding.
If we don't really care about the later format, the MPEG capabilities would be more than welcomed by the owners of the expensive Geforce 6800, since it means better quality, and less load for the CPU, which would also mean, for PowerMac G5s, less noise.
NVidia has not yet enabled the encoding capabilities, but they might be available in a future revision of the drivers. That would certainly come in handy for semi-pros who need to encode a lot of video, and that could also push Apple to use 6xxx based cards in its line-up.
For a laptop, that'd mean more battery life when playing DVD.
For iDVD, that'd mean faster conversion phases, even on an iMac.
http://www.nvidia.com
[kurisu adds : a few ATI chips offer MPEG2 decoding capabilities]