Flash video is tough on CPUs. Netbooks have relatively slow CPUs. As a result, netbooks and desktops with low power Intel Atom processors have had a tough time handling some high quality and high definition Flash video since day one. Well, today is officially day two, thanks to the beta release of Adobe Flash Player 10.1.

OK, that might be an overstatement. But here’s the thing: Flash Player 10.1 includes support for GPU acceleration for H.264 encoded Flash video. That means if you have a supported graphics processor, you should be able to watch 720p and even 1080p Flash video smoothly without overtaxing your CPU. Two of those supported processors are becoming increasingly common in netbooks and thin and light laptops: NVIDIA ION and Intel GMA X4500MHD.

The NVIDIA ION platform combines a low power Atom processor with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics. The result is a low power laptop that might seem a bit sluggish performing some everyday tasks, but which can play some modern video games and decode Blu-Ray video. And thanks to Flash 10.1, it can also handle 1080p Flash video playback.

Intel’s GMA X4500MHD shows up in laptops using the Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) platform. That includes the Acer Aspire 1410, 1810T, and Asus UL20A, although the only laptop I’ve had handy to test Flash Player 10.1 beta with was the UL20A. It handles HD Flash video beautifully.

The folks at NVIDIA sent me an ASRock ION 330 nettop with ION graphics to test HD Flash performance, and the results are pretty impressive. You can check out my before and after videos after the break. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 should work just as well on laptops with the NVIDIA ION platform including the HP Mini 311, Lenovo IdeaPad S12, and Samsung N510.

Unfortunately, Flash Player 10.1 will not work with the GMA 950 graphics that come with nearly every other Intel Atom powered netbook on the market. I’m actually not sure about compatibility with Intel’s GMA 500 graphics, but I wouldn’t hold my breathe.

NVIDIA also cautions that while an ION-based notebook supports full GPU acceleration for HD Flash video, the CPU still has to be able to keep up with all the disk and network activity, and you may notice some stuttering because of that. You should be able to get around this in most cases by hitting pause on the video a moment after you hit play and letting it buffer briefly before you start playing the video again.

You can download Flash Player 10.1 from the Adobe Labs web site.

Update: The release notes are now available (PDF link), complete with a list of supported graphics cards. Flash Player 10.1 beta is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. But the hardware acceleration features are only available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7 right now. You can find a list of supported hardware after the break.

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A few new details are coming about about NVIDIA’s Tegra platform for low cost netbooks. First, as expected, these things can handle HD video without using much electricity at all. The Tegra 600 platform can handle H.264 video at 720p resolutions, and the Tegra 650 can do 1080p. And as TechVideoBlog discovered, that doesn’t just go for videos stored on your hard drive. They’ve posted a demo video showing a Tegra-based netbook streaming HD video from the web.

But what about Flash? Well, we have more mixed results there. The NVIDIA GPU certainly helps render graphics generally, and the demo unit handled Flash heavy sites like Flash Earth quite well. No word on how it handles full screen Flash video from sites like Hulu or YouTube. I really wish more people would adopt a Hulu test as a de facto standard, because it’s the one site that I’ve found Intel Atom processors struggle with once you have a screen larger than 1024 x 600 pixels. Of course, the Computex trade show is in Taiwan, while Hulu doesn’t stream video outside of the US, but a demonstration of HD Flash video streaming from YouTube would have been nice.

Anyway, the other impressive thing from the TechVideoBlog video is that the Mobinnova élan demo unit is running Firefox 3.5. On Windows CE. Most Tegra-based netbooks are going to be saddled with 512MB of RAM or less, which means they’re going to struggle to display more than 3-4 Firefox tabs at a time. But I’m thinking I might not mind dealing with the limitations of a Windows CE device if it can run Firefox. Incidentally, yesterday Acer was showing off a netbook running Firefox on Google Android.

You can check out the complete video from TechVideoBlog after the break.

via Engadget

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NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Adobe are working on adding GPU acceleration for Flash video to their video solutions for low power netbooks and MIDs. Because, while you can stream full screen standard definition Hulu video pretty well on a machine 1024 x 600 pixel display and an Intel Atom CPU, good luck trying to do the same thing on a 1366 x 768 pixel screen. And you can forget about high definition Flash video.

NVIDIA’s recently launched ION and Tegra platforms bundle NVIDIA graphics processors with low power Intel Atom and ARM chips to improve overall graphics performance. But since there’s no GPU acceleration for Flash yet, web video playback is typically handed off to the CPU. And the truth is that most low power netbook processors aren’t up to the task of handling high quality Flash video yet. That’s why I’ve been disappointed with the performance of low power machines that should make excellent home theater PCs. Because an HTPC that can’t handle Hulu and HD YouTube videos is so 2003.

Anyway, it looks like relief could be on the way. Unfortunately it won’t arrive until next year.

Both NVIDIA and Broadcom have announced that they’re working with Adobe to bring GPU acceleration for Adobe Flash to their products. Broadcom makes the Broaddcom Crystal HD accelerator which will be available as an option in the recently announced HP Mini 110 netbook. Both platforms will be able to handle high definition Flash video using he H.264 codec, which means you should see better performance from YouTube, CBS, Hulu, and the BBC iPlayer.

Unfortunately, Broadcom says its solution won’t be available until the first half of 2010. There’s no timeframe at all in the Adobe press release.

via Engadget