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Designed for low power consumption, the company is claiming that the new GoForce 5500 handheld graphics processing unit is the industry's first handheld GPU to playback H.264, WMV9 and MPEG-4 video up to D1 resolution (700 X 480 pixels on the US based NTSC and 720 X 576 in PAL) at 30 frames per second.

There has been a huge amount of buzz in the industry around the delivery of TV to mobile phones in the past year or so with a number of companies conducting trials of services. While the jury is still out as to whether mobile TV is the killer app that will at last get 3G moving out of the shops, Nvidia reckons that there is an opportunity to move into this vast potential market with a GPU tuned for handsets.

Nvidia says the new chip also enables surround sound, support for rapid shots in camera phones and support for up to 10megapixel resolution. Apparently its good for playing games like Quake, too.

Nvidia says it expects devices using the GoForce 5500 handheld GPU to appear on the shelves by Christmas this year.