GMA 500 now decodes HD video with Flash 10.1 beta 3

Reserved up until now for dedicated graphics cards and the Intel GMA 950 and 4500MHD chipsets, the Flash 10.1 plug-in is now available in version beta3 and can also handle GMA 500 chipset hardware acceleration. These graphics parts are to be found in netbooks equipped with Atom Z series processors, which is sure to make some of you happy. Over to you to access your HD YouTubes!

Asus Eee PC 1101HA, Acer Aspire One 751 or the Asus Eee PC T91 for example, can now read HD video using Flash on the internet with perfect fluidity. Up until a few months ago it was still impossible to view internet HD video properly on a netbook. Flash handling of hardware acceleration has happily changed this.

The Flash10.1 plug-in is still under development and is now in its third version (beta 3). Often criticised for being too demanding on the CPU, we can only congratulate Adobe for making the effort to change things. That said, forthcoming support of HD video  (H.264 ?) by the HTML 5 language is perhaps linked to this move by Adobe as the Flash plug-in is no longer likely to be of much use.

We should say however, that, in terms of the GMA 500, the new version of Flash only runs with 32-bit Windows 7. You'll also need to using the most recent Intel drivers. For the other Intel chipsets, 32 and 64-bit Windows Vista is also supported.

> Download the Flash 10.1 beta 3 plug-in from Adobe Labs


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