Over the last few years there has been an explosion of flash video. This really got going when YouTube hit the scene but was beginning its climb even before then on certain, um ...questionable sites. But the problem has always been one of performance, it is true that the modern desktop can run flash without any problems but we start to have issues when we get into the personal media players and netbooks/nettops. These systems do not have the available CPU power to spare for larger or high resolution flash video.

NVIDIA has been working to change this, together with Adobe they have developed a new version of the Flash Player that can run on the GPU (thanks to the use of NV's CUDA technology). Again on the average desktop or even laptop this is not much use. But when you drop it onto a nettop or netbook equipped with ION or GF9400M then you have something. Suddenly you open up a whole new vista of Flash video capabilities on the "net" product and even open up the possibility for flash video on smaller devices (like those powered by Tegra).

Unfortunately at the time if this writing the new player has limited support and only runs on NV products running under Windows. Still it is an improvement we are glad to see and one that does hold promise for the future.