Netbooks may be compact devices capable of handling business tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets, but they certainly fall short when it comes to handling high resolution graphics. In fact, many netbooks today struggle to handle true HD, which is why the news that Intel was releasing its latest processors to the market was a big news for netbook fans. But you are still going to need additional help for your netbook to become truly HD-friendly. That’s what Broadcom and Nvidia are planning to offer.

Broadcom will be offering a chip that will work with your processor and makes HD play back much more easier to manage for your netbook. Broadcom has already announced BCM70015 Crystal HD, so some netbooks will be taking advantage of that to make life easier for their owners. Nvidia ION is another solution that will be mainstream fairly soon. The next generation netbooks will most likely take advantage of that to enable their owners to watch true HD content (e.g blu-ray) on their machines.

So what’s the catch? You are going to have to check the specs of netbooks carefully before picking one up that satisfies your needs. Not all of the future netbooks will come with these capabilities. The good news is those that do will be able to handle more sophisticated graphics much easier. Let’s hope the prices don’t skyrocket as a result.