The appearance of NVIDIA Video Super Resolution promises to give us higher image quality in the videos we see on the internet, which includes the reproduction of content from streaming platforms such as Netflix, HBO, Disney + and others. Is this the final nail in the Blu-Ray coffin, or will the green company’s tendency to limit its ideas to its high-end products leave it as an anecdote?
The big annoyance for content distributors over the internet is 4K resolution, despite the fact that fiber optics have been around for a long time and with the ability to reach 1 gigabit of data transfer, this is not enough to support several streams of quality at that resolution. So despite the fact that little by little Blu-Ray is disappearing, there is still a redoubt, that of the purists of image quality.
Until now movies on PC looked worse
One of the particularities that Blu-Ray has and what else its evangelists defend is the fact that its videos have a much higher bit rate than internet streaming platforms. As is well known, the more information, the greater the visual detail. And just like with music, if the data is insufficient, quality is lost in the final composition. Although it happens that there is a point where most users see the film as good enough in terms of image quality, which allows reducing the average size and facilitating its distribution over the Internet.
Although unlike DVD or CD, the blue laser format has not become the standard for data on PCs today. Everyone knows that it has done so on the console, since it has been the game storage and distribution format since the second half of the 2000s. While on computers, digital distribution has been more opted for. So while dedicated gaming systems that connect to a TV have a reader for watching movies, PCs lack it.
This has limited the majority of computer users in being able to watch movies in Blu-ray format or with the same quality. Of course they can buy an external reader, but for this the outlay is not justified. And this is where we enter the NVIDIA solution, which we told you about a few days ago and which has finally been launched on the market.
NVIDIA finally launches its Video Super Resolution, but with limitations
The latest NVIDIA driver contains support for its Video Super Resolution unfortunately, the RTX 20 cannot support that technology, and we don’t know why, but we suspect that it is a case of planned obsolescence. So it will only be available to users of an RTX 30 or 40 in both the portable and desktop versions. The algorithm is very similar in operation to DLSS, however, it is adapted for streaming video media.
Its main functionality is that it allows reconstructing videos at a higher resolution than the original format and with greater detail than the classic and thousands of times used bicubic interpolation, despite using it as the basis of the algorithm. What allows to have the same as Blu-Ray, but with a much lower bit rate than in said format. However, it must be taken into account that the detail generated by the AI does not correspond to the original at a higher resolution and, as always, it is an adversative type inference algorithm.
Ideally, as with games, the algorithm adapts to the different film titles and series on the market. However, how do we know that this is not going to be the case? At least envy offers us four levels of quality in the generation of higher resolution videos. Of course, requiring more power from our graphics card in the process.
Will NVIDIA’s VSR really replace Blu-Ray?
Nothing could be further from the truth, mostly due to the fact that it is another of Jen Hsen Huang’s company exercises to show us how good AI is and it only works in web browsers and nothing else. There is no intention on the part of NVIDIA, as we have already said, to optimize the algorithm for each movie and series on the market. What’s more, the development of new codecs has become a more efficient way to improve image quality at low bit rates and does not require powerful graphics cards.
