It's easier than your making it... It's all down to the codec (and player which uses it). Most HD stuff broadcast is in H.264 which is easily offloaded by all the modern GPU's from nvidia and ATI.
The Matroska stuff is a container, so if it's H264 inside it, your gpu will offload the decode, simple as that.
As for DVD / HD-DVD / BR there not 'lightly compressed' at all. DVD is 10Mbps including audio so Highly compressed and BR is a mix of MPG2 (same as DVD) or AVC1 (H264 or MPG4 as some call it, AVC1 is actualy based on Windows Media 9 Pro codecs) upto 40Mbps and HD-DVD (the better technical format) is AVC1 at 40Mbps (no mpg2). The last uncompressed digital video format was LaserDisk, which still looks better than DVD impo, even MegaBit DVD's.
All of these formats have the ability to be partialy decoded by GPU, but any Core2 cpu could handle any of the formats in software only anyhow (but will run at 70 to 100% cpu).
My Laptop a core2 1.83 running Vista x64 using an Intel GPU (so limited offload) has never struggled with 1080p and I know 1.6ghz ones that handle it as well.
If your doing it in Vista though I would recommend a good chunk of RAM
Just make sure that you have a Codec that supports your cards GPU to play back the format. PowerDVD/WinDVD's MPG4/AVC1/H264 codecs are a good 'easy' starting point, or FFDShow-Tryout is a great place to go if you have the grunt, and don't want the hassle of multiple codecs installed on your system.