The first of the netbooks to hit the market were underpowered when it came to decoding most video, especially if that video was in HD resolution. This left users frustrated with choppy video playback or the outright inability to play some videos.
NVIDIA stepped in and launched its Ion platform that allows the lowly netbook to offload the decoding of HD video from the processor to the GPU for smooth playback and better overall system performance. NVIDIA set some lofty goals for its Ion chipset and aimed to oust Intel integrated graphics from notebooks and netbooks with the new offering. It has taken a while, but netbooks and other machines using Ion are finally hitting the market in force.
