[dschmelzer]

Hi All--


I don't follow video cards that much, but I do have a question. Some time ago there was a discussion about 1080p output from a video card. As I recall, we figured out that it wouldn't be possible with the current crop of cards.


Has that changed? Did I have a misimpression? Does anybody here have a display capable of resolving 1080p?


Thanks!

 

[PVR]

I don't know if this counts (exactly) but

my desktop runs [email protected] (a "standard"

Radeon output resolution) to a Sony W900 monitor.


I playback DVDs at this resolution and have

used "software" HDTV players to play HiPix files

at "1080p" resolution.


I am not sure the AGP bus can pass enough

data to do 30+ updates per second of the full

1920x1080 pixels. I think the HDTV playback

software needs to send "special instructions"

(e.g.:iDCT commands) to the VGA card rather

than trying to do all the decoding on the

main system CPU.


Hardware HDTV cards (like HiPix & accessDTV)

may be incapable of generating 1080p because

of limits of the power of their MPEG2 decoding

chip or the bandwidth of the RAMDACs.

 

[dschmelzer]

That is very helpful. Thank you. It seems to be generating 1080p fine, if you can set it and your monitor recognizes it. It's just a matter of the card supporting that size of overlay, I suppose.


Will AGP pass 125 MB/s of data?

 

[xcel]

Hi Dan:


___Your average 4X AGP card and slot have theoretical bandwidth of over 1,000 MB/sec. What your card actually uses on that dedicated AGP bus however is more than likely far less than theoretical but much higher than the std. PCI bandwidth of ~ 132 MB/s theoretical.


___Good Luck


___Wayne R. Gerdes

___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.

___ [email protected]

 

[vruiz]

Could anyone figure out how to take a 1080i signal from a PC HDTV card, deinterlace it and send it out as 1080p? That would be awesome, specially for people with 8" and 9" front projectors. Is this even possible?

 

[KBK]

I don't know if this adds to the info or not, but, I removed the filters frommy Radeon LE, and used BNC connectors, etc, and am running my PJ at 1929x1200, and am getting a damned fine image with DVD's interpolated up to that rez. The cards can disply, but of course, it is all hardware with what I am doing, so... However, I suspect that there is (will be) suffuicent bandwidth to do what you want to do, at least in modern chassis (HTPC) by the time you get it realized.

 

[trbarry]

I've used various free tools to convert a few minutes of the PBS demo loop to 1072p @ 24 FPS. I had to trim it from 1088 for some reason but that was maybe a bug in my Greedy code at that size back then.


I couldn't recompress that resolution in Divx4 (crash) but I did keep some using HuffYUV.


I have no way to display it yet either at that resolution or at full speed. But it makes a nice slide show.


- Tom

 

[PVR]

The Faroudja DVP5000 will convert 1080i to 1080p

but set you back around $20,000
http://www.faroudja.com/products/dvp.dvp5000.html


Our best hope for cheap 1080p on an HTPC

will be the

Ravisent Cineplayer DTV product running

on a Radeon card.


I think they are really close to having a product

that would make alot of people happy but they

seem to be selling only to overseas OEMs

right now.


Hopefully they will get it to work for us.


Elecard has investigated putting in NVIDIA

"HDVP" hardware support into their player so

maybe they will come up with something for

the GeForce2,3 cards as well.


Sort of funny, but I think one of the biggest

problems that the software players are

running up against is keeping lipsync even though

you have to accept an occasional dropped

video frame.

 

[dschmelzer]

PVR: yeh, that $20,000 is what I'm looking to avoid. I wonder whether the Faroudja does a simple weave or bob or actually does full processing on a 1080i picture...


Anyway, it looks like we can physically transfer the video to overlay and the card can output 1080p (if we want it to). The question still remains, then, whether or not an overlay can hold that much information. Anybody know?

 

[chap]

Quote:

Originally posted by PVR I playback DVDs at this resolution and have used "software" HDTV players to play HiPix files at "1080p" resolution.

How did the software playback when you tried the 1080p resolution? Was it watchable? What are your system specs? Thanx.

 

[trbarry]

Sometime the overlays are really not displaying all the pixels at the stated resolution. See the comments by pcdvdguy and Bjoern Roy in the RAVISENT CinePlayer DVD 4.0 thread


- Tom

 

[PVR]

>> How did the software playback when you tried

>> the 1080p resolution? Was it watchable?

>> What are your system specs? Thanx.


System #1:

933MHz PIII, 128MB RDRAM, GeForce2Ultra VGA

Using the latest Elecard software player,

I can view HiPix 1080i files as 1080p on

my 1920x1440 desktop (desktop showing above

and below the window) at about 15-18 frames

per second. Cartoon movies (such as Titan AE

or the South Park movie) are actually watchable

(and look nice) since lipsync is not really

an issue.

I have played with various Ravisent products

and tried using their filters in Graphedit

or through zoomplayer and found that some

of their releases can actually play 1080i

MPEG streams (extracted from HiPix files).

Playback was not quite as good as with Elecard

(on this system), but it shows that they have

potential to process 1920x1080i MPEG2 in

their software.


System #2:

600Mhz PIII, 128MB RDRAM, Radeon LE card

With my desktop running at 1920x1080 I can

view ATSC HiPix files using the Elecard player

in fullscreen at about 10fps on this machine.

Some of the Ravisent filters seemed to actually

get close to full speed (about 25fps) on this

machine but sometime weird things happen

(lost lipsync, hashmarks showing across

the video or application crashes).


In both cases (Ravisent or Elecard) the filters

to turn 1920x1080 MPEG2 into 1080p on the desktop

produce very nice looking output but put a

huge strain on the system processing power.


I think if I had a more recent vintage machine

(1.5GHz+) and a faster VGA card (e.g.: Radeon 8500+) the system would have the potential to

do full framerate in software.


From what I have seen the ATI filters do take

advantage of some hardware acceleration on

the ATI cards, and have the potential to do

full framerate on "modest" hardware, but it

seems like they are still prone to "goof up"

on some datastreams. Perhaps that is why

Cineplayer DTV is not shipping? Maybe it works

well 98% of the time, but every so often you

run into something that messes up the playback.


My HiPix card (interlaced 1080i output only)

seems to recover well if there are errors

in the ATSC datastream... Perhaps the software

players need more work to be able to handle

those data problems before they are ready

for primetime...

 

[dschmelzer]

Thanks, Tom. Extremely informative thread, although it leaves my head spinning a little bit, especially with the half-height limitation. Let me reread it a couple of times.


Pat Megenity mentioned that there appeared to be some resolution problems with HDTV on his HTPC, so everything squares.

 

[trbarry]

When discussing bandwidth limitations, we should remember that processing 1080p probably takes LESS bandwidth than 1080i if done correctly.


That is, if you trust the flags in the ATSC stream, you can do 3:2 pulldown removal on movies and will actually only have to transfer 24 frames / second to the video buffer.


But regular 1080i is actually transferring 30 frames / second, or of course even 60 if done like DScaler does it.


This assumes you don't have to do DScaler type video processing to find out which ones to display or deinterlace and that we are watching properly mastered telecined film source. But that is likely true for HDTV movies.


I'd hope the decoders can already do this, but really don't know.


- Tom