Announced this afternoon, PureVideo HD is platform agnostic, supporting both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and tackles some of the thornier issues involved with the new technologies, from content protection to lack of CPU headroom for decoding hi-def discs.
According to a briefing Nvidia held today, future GeForce 7000-series cards (and currently, the GeForce 7950 GX2 and the GeForce 7600 GT) will be able to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD content at full resolution, thanks to onboard HDCP support and built-in hardware acceleration (even the fastest CPUs can't handle 1080p content streaming from an optical drive at 30fps). We've got one of those 7600 GT boards in our brand-new Blu-ray Sony VAIO RC310G.
PureVideo HD-compatible versions of playback programs such as PowerDVD and InterVideo's WinDVD are expected soon, creating a secure data chain, from the next-gen drive to the video card to the playback software.
Nvidia plans to get FAQs up about PureVideo HD in the coming days. Some preliminary info is available here and here.