If you are anything like me, you have likely become more than a little frustrated when trying to watch video on your desktop or notebook. Whether you were trying to stream a show live from Hulu.com, view an on-demand movie  or watch direct from  DVD, there is a good chance that the vast majority of you have asked yourself, “Why can’t this work better?”

Rejoice! 

Today AMD is excited about Adobe’s release of a beta Adobe Flash Player 10.1 browser runtime supporting VISION Technology from AMD, providing truly outstanding video playback quality on Flash-based H.264 video.  Adobe and AMD have been working closely together to optimize video playback performance of Flash Player 10.1 by taking advantage of hardware acceleration on Windows-based PCs built with AMD technology supporting ATI Stream technology.

Through the integration of AMD and Adobe’s technologies, you can expect to enjoy improved video playback performance which is designed to extend notebook battery life, and reduce CPU utilization ― meaning that the GPU is doing more of the work, which frees up the CPU for other tasks. In our labs when viewing HD video, we’ve seen CPU usage drop by as much as 30% – and that’s nothing to sneeze at!

As one of the world’s most pervasive multimedia platforms, Adobe Flash is an obvious platform to work with and we are excited to see the fruits of our labor come to you.

Flash Player 10.1 beta is available for users and developers to download now and you can actually see the impact of GPU acceleration here. Make sure you have the latest driver to enjoy the full Flash Player 10.1 experience. Go ahead and take a look and why not let us know your thoughts ― we would love to hear what you think and how you plan on using it.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.