1. A method of managing video displays in a computer system, said computer system including a graphics card, a video display and an operating system, said computer system being operable to run a software application and said graphics card being operable to render images to said video display, said method comprising the steps of: receiving a draw event from said software application via a universal application programming interface (API) of said operating system, which supports hardware layers on graphics cards; determining what hardware layers are available on said graphics card, and what their parameters are; said operating system rendering said draw request selectively to video layers corresponding to particular ones of said available hardware layers on said graphics card; and said graphics card mapping data on said video layers to particular ones of said available hardware layers for display on said video display; whereby said software application may exploit available hardware layers on said graphics card, without knowledge of their existence.