There was an interesting article posted today at [H]ard|OCP that explains their experience with HD video playback on the PC using NVIDIA's soon to be released beta drivers that enable PureVideo HD functionality. Kyle asks NVIDIA some questions regarding the technology and talks about his experience playing back some protected content on the PC with various different configurations.
"Keep in mind these are Beta drivers and NVIDIA is working day and night to chase the bugs out. That said, the ForeWare v92.91 Beta driver and included PureVideo HD technology (To be released on 9/14/06 at nZone.) were extremely stable for me on all the systems we tested it on. There is fine tuning that needs to be done, but that is to be expected with Beta software. The HD DVD movie experience that I had on my PC was stellar and will actually make you wonder, "Just how much more detail do I want to see in Don Cheadle's face?"