Graphics cards to upscale SD to HD?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Graphics cards to upscale SD to HD?

rlevis

347 posts

Ultimate Geek

#86267 5-Jul-2011 02:10

I'm aware some DVD players have special upscaling technology which can make SD material look closer to HD. This makes SD viewing on a big screen TV more appealing.

I'm using MediaPortal for viewing DVB-T, and I'm hoping for a similar solution for viewing SD channels. I'm wondering if there are any graphics cards which have smart SD upscaling in the GPU, with picture enhancements that are only applied to SD material?

Cheers.

sbiddle

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#489457 5-Jul-2011 06:18

A GFX card won't do this by itself as it's only outputting video in the native resolution, which is already HD. You need to use software such as FFDShow to perform post processing to do this.

And there isn't really a simple way to just target certain channels.

rlevis

347 posts

Ultimate Geek

#489644 5-Jul-2011 13:16

I believe using postprocessing causes the GPU to be not used at all for deinterlacing etc.

How I understand it works, the H.264 decoder filter utilizes the GPU in the GFX card to deinterlace the video. Is this not at the original video resolution? Or does MP upscale to the GFX screen resolution before it gets to the decoder filter? That doesn't sound right to me.

1gkar

722 posts

Ultimate Geek

#490239 6-Jul-2011 20:07

Yes you can setup ffdshow to upscale to display output resolution. I have been uisng this for some time now. By setting profiles within ffdshow you can determine whether a media file should be upscaled.

Here is a thread which showed I had some initial issues getting it up & running.

Here is another thread on MP upscaling with ffdshow profile settings included. Haven't tried them, though.

Also, the MP WIKI has a section.

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rlevis

347 posts

Ultimate Geek

#490789 7-Jul-2011 20:42

I've already done this for movies/videos. I have SD movies/DVD's upscaled/sharpened and not HD movies. This works well as the movies are only 24 or 25 fps and don't need deinterlacing, so this can be done all via the CPU.

But deinterlacing 1080i using BOB or better techniques is expensive for the CPU, causing at least the fans to spin up to maximum and cause lots of noise while watching TV, so it really needs to utilize the GPU for TV.

So, what I'm asking is if there is a GFX card available with a GPU which has similar resize sharpening features that ffdshow can do for SD video.

I take it from the lack of replies that no manufactuerer has bothered doing this, which is disappointing. I would pay double for one that does.