Can the video card tell it's HD?

[mikeh49]

Long story short: for a given resolution, for example 1360X768, can the video card tell, or does it care, whether the "picture" is SD or HD? They both have the same number of pixels although the frame rate might be different depending on interlacing, right? Presumably the HD picture has more pixels that are different, but it seems the card still has to drive every pixel. The bit rate coming from the decoder and/or renderer is greater for HD than SD, I assume, but does the video card deal with this, or the CPU?

Input from the experts, or pointer to on-line resource would be appreciated.

Background: new LCD TV for Christmas (like everybody else!); previously feeding SD from PVR150 at GBPVR High Quality via Geforce 6200 S-video output at 720X480 to SD CRT TV using VMR9 custom. Worked great once quartz.dll issue fixed. Connected to new TV using VGA (no DVI-HDMI cable on hand); now had the infamous Nvidia tearing and choppy video at any resolution between 1024X768 to 1360X768. Had to go back to Overlay to get smooth video with no tearing. (Also tried FSE which was better, but had problems coming out of hibernate.) Finally decided to try EVR/.Net3 and found it works fine at 1360X768 with PVRX2, albeit with the color saturation still needing some adjusting.

Thanks guys.

[stustunz]

if using windows xp with evr then the cpu will be doing the work as hardware acceleration for the video card doesnt work with evr on xp

as for how much work is been done then yes it goes up the higher the output resolution

but if you had HD signal then the work load goes up again as it has to process a higher amount of info all the way

hence you need really good video card and fast cpu to do hd all the way

if you are only pushing SD to a higher resolution then just find the sweet spot that looks best on you lcd where the text is sharp the picture should be also

[pBS]

yea, vid card isn't up to it...might try 1024x768 if only using svideo...
[svideo can't 'really' output 1366x768]
best bet is vga-1366x768x60hz
tho your card might not able to drive that either...
if playing a HD show thru 800x600, it still has to decode the full HD resolution, then it downscales it to output to tv...so if the card can't decode HD, it doesn't matter what output resolution you use..

oh and my ati card does evr acceleration in xp...
[just can't zoom past borders like with fse]

get like a ati x1550+ or nvidia 7600+ and HD will be sweet..

[Deusxmachina]

The bit rate coming from the decoder and/or renderer is greater for HD than SD, I assume, but does the video card deal with this, or the CPU?

Video card can help, but CPU is more important. I watch 1080i/p all the time with no video card acceleration. If you're on the verge of your setup almost working, then a better video card can help if you can get hardware acceleration working with the various files. If you later go with a new setup, CPU is priority #1.

[nicklowiczcomputers]

The bit rate coming from the decoder and/or renderer is greater for HD than SD, I assume, but does the video card deal with this, or the CPU?

I am running a server and using nextpvr with kodi.. the video card in server is basic but I don't have a monitor even connected because it's a server.. would adding a hardware acceleration video card help make clients recording better or improve quality at all? I am trying to troubleshoot why recordings only play 3 min even though it shows the actual length but this post caught my attention because I am not sure if the onboard video of the server is enough being I just connect to this from clients or would adding pci express card help

Video card can help, but CPU is more important.  I watch 1080i/p all the time with no video card acceleration.  If you're on the verge of your setup almost working, then a better video card can help if you can get hardware acceleration working with the various files.  If you later go with a new setup, CPU is priority #1.