Hi Paul,
The VPP sample was written to expose all VPP features up to Media SDK API 1.3. To simplify the code the API version was hardcoded to 1.3 in CreateFrameProcessor function inside sample_vpp_utils.cpp.
Media SDK API 1.3 HW acceleration will not be available until the driver release for the next generation Intel processor early next year. This also correlates with the release of Media SDK 2012 (3.0) Gold.
You can still use the VPP sample with HW acceleration by changing the API version to 1.1. However, keep in mind that if you try to use any VPP features related to the 1.3 API, it will fail.
Regards,