Until now I've been using Media Player Classic + ffdshow to watch Xvid/DivX/H.264 videos (recently also mplayer+MPUI), and I watch my DVDs with MPC's built-in decoder, at least that's how I think it works. I've also had an ATI X1600 card for some time and had no idea what Avivo was until recently, and I would like to know how do I take advantage of this feature and what exactly are it's capabilities?

Thanks.

For AVIVO, you have to use a player that supports hardware acceleration. Most - if not all - DVD playback software does. Of course it has to be enabled. Then you have to enable "Pulldown Detection" in the ATI display driver (under Deinterlacing) and also enable "Windows Media Video Acceleration", if it exists. Capabilities are improved video quality and lower CPU utilization.