One often forgotten part of a review is DVD Playback. DVD Playback has been hardware supported via motion compensation, in video cards since at least 1996 with the introduction of the Rage chipset by ATI. Motion compensation works in parallel with MMX processors to enable playback of DVD clips using software, which eliminates dedicated MPEG-2 hardware.

By off-loading the motion compensation step from the microprocessor, playback frame rate is increased by about 15 to 30 per cent today, with larger percentage improvements planned for the future. iDCT stands for Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform. It is a mathematical formula used in DVD encoding/decoding. Certain assistance cards have iDCT hardware. In combination with Motion Compensation, iDCT can accelerate DVD playback by moving approx. 70% of the DVD decoding process onto the card itself, allowing for smooth DVD playback on slower CPUs.

On the AIW Radeon VE, DVD playback was smooth in all of the movies I tried. I played Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Matrix, A Christmas Story and Spiderman. All played without pauses (except for one switch of the layers in The Matrix). ATI's DVD Player includes a Eject button, a button to repeat the selected scene, Parental Control, Zoom/Unzoom button, a Go Up button, Start from beginning button, Play at specific spot button, Closed Captioning button, Mute button, Change view angle stop, play, pause, fast forward, skip next, rewind, and skip previous buttons. All of these buttons are pretty self-explanatory.