NVIDIA's PureVideo HD Interview & Experiences

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NVIDIA's PureVideo HD Interview & Experiences - Looking for HD on your PC or HTPC? What video cards, displays, hardware, software? We ask some pointed questions of NVIDIA about making this happen and then tell you about our experiences with HD-DVD and NVIDIA's PureVideHD technology.

Keep in mind these are Beta drivers and NVIDIA is working day and night to chase the bugs out. That said, the ForeWare v92.91 Beta driver and included PureVideo HD technology (To be released on 9/14/06 at nZone.) were extremely stable for me on all the systems we tested it on. There is fine tuning that needs to be done, but that is to be expected with Beta software. The HD DVD movie experience that I had on my PC was stellar and will actually make you wonder, “Just how much more detail do I want to see in Don Cheadle’s face?”
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THANK YOU for this article. Finally, an all in one place for everything that's needed to play these DVDs. I've had a hard time figuring out what how these different acronyms relate together and just figuring out what exactly is going on with these things. Now i think i finally understand.
 
It's great to see this technology finally coming into the headlines, I greatly appreciate finally having some concrete solutions on the horizon. However, it IS disappointing to hear about your lackluster experience when hooking up the test system to your pioneer plasma. I myself have a 5060 and am an avid HTPC user and have never had any issues with any video source. Since the plasma was your only test of an HDCP over HDMI connection, I seriously doubt the plasma is to blame. A video source is a video source, and if a stand alone HD-DVD player doesn't cause my set to stutter, I have a hard time believing your issues were a result of the display. I have a similar HTPC setup as you were using (only have 1 GB ram, and a 6600GT). From my experience (read: my opinion), this clearly sounds like a source issue.

What resolutions were you running when you had the test system hooked up to your plasma? If you were providing a 1080i or 720p source, the amount of post-processing done by the pio would be minimal.
 
beanman101283 said:
THANK YOU for this article. Finally, an all in one place for everything that's needed to play these DVDs. I've had a hard time figuring out what how these different acronyms relate together and just figuring out what exactly is going on with these things. Now i think i finally understand.
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This was mine and NVIDIA's exact goal. You made my day. :) I am not a videophile at all and wanted something in that same vein. Please ask any other questions as we can still reach out and get them answered.

My thanks go out to NVIDIA for giving us the opportunity to cover this and for giving us another no-BS interview.
 
Nice article. Thanks for the info. Too many hoops for me to jump thru just to watch a movie. I think that I'll pass. :rolleyes:
 
tekmassa said:
It's great to see this technology finally coming into the headlines, I greatly appreciate finally having some concrete solutions on the horizon. However, it IS disappointing to hear about your lackluster experience when hooking up the test system to your pioneer plasma. I myself have a 5060 and am an avid HTPC user and have never had any issues with any video source. Since the plasma was your only test of an HDCP over HDMI connection, I seriously doubt the plasma is to blame. A video source is a video source, and if a stand alone HD-DVD player doesn't cause my set to stutter, I have a hard time believing your issues were a result of the display. I have a similar HTPC setup as you were using (only have 1 GB ram, and a 6600GT). From my experience (read: my opinion), this clearly sounds like a source issue.

What resolutions were you running when you had the test system hooked up to your plasma? If you were providing a 1080i or 720p source, the amount of post-processing done by the pio would be minimal.
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NVIDIA is not relying on any assumptions when it comes to this and will be fully testing. The signal in was 1080i. I am not here to argue the points, only pass along my experiences and from them HTPC guys need to tread carefully is all, at least at this point.

Discussing the issues with NVIDIA, and if it is in fact the panels post-processing features (and assuming it is for the moment) are clashing with NVIDIA's own, I think NVIDIA is going to find out that they are going to have to take responsibility for making this work in the market place. It is simply not realistic to suggest to high-end display owners that they make these huge adjustments to their panels in order to use NVIDIA's PureVideo HD solution. Doing that will create their failure in that market.

I am sure it will all come out in the wash. There is still a LOT of work to be done on these drivers and that is the reason the drivers are still classified as Beta. :)
 
What optical drives work at this time? I recall reading that Sony was going to disable video playback in their Blu-Ray burner and market it for the media size only and that is was not the only manufacturer considering that route to combat piracy.

Can you list some available optical drives for both formats?

Did you try to output 720p to you display to check if that helped?

Bo

P.S. Nice article. Great timing for the subject matter.
 
Scott Vouri. After those ten questions, we follow up with our hands-on experience using NVIDIA PureVideo HD, an HDMI/HDCP equipped video card, a HD-DVD payer, and various displays. We do our best to
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Great article, lots of good information. Thanks Kyle!
 
So, the parts are coming together. . .

Just pisses me off I just got a Panasonic TH-50PX50U last year and it is not HDCP compliant.

WHY?! Ah well . . . Life goes on.
 
Thanks for the article, though i still think i am going to wait a year or so before i even think about blue-ray
 
The article is very informative and I think many people were waiting for someone to "break it
down" for them. You have done just that sir.

I am not sure what company I will go to for my next gen card, but Nvidia is looking even better
now that I can see they are hard at work with their HD software.

I plan on having a PS3 for Blu-ray movie watching and if Blu-ray movies don't start rivaling HD DVD in quality
I might add a HD DVD player to my PC. My monitor is not HDCP compliant but my HDTV that
I am going to buy soon is.

Sharp Aquos LC-37D90U 37" 1080p LCD 2 x HDMI

I want it all when it come to my next graphic card purchase. DX10, HDCP ready and SLi
or CrossFire ready.
 
Bochista said:
What optical drives work at this time? I recall reading that Sony was going to disable video playback in their Blu-Ray burner and market it for the media size only and that is was not the only manufacturer considering that route to combat piracy.

Can you list some available optical drives for both formats?

Did you try to output 720p to you display to check if that helped?

Bo

P.S. Nice article. Great timing for the subject matter.
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From what was reported, the initial shipments of Blu-ray drives require a firmware flash in order to play movies.

Yes, I tried vaious resolutions. My screen is 1280x768.
 
Too bad the answers for #6 and #10 will fall on deaf ears for the FUDsters.
 
good article

Now once HD-DVD and Blu-ray PC drives come down to below $200 OR if some company has the balls to create a combo drive, even if its just a read only combo drive that can do HD-DVD/Blue-ray/DVD, all I need is an HDCP vid card, those are relatively cheap too, $100-250.
 
Kyle,
So, with this new Forceware, we no longer need the additional PureVideo add-on (which nVidia charges for)?
 
Hello sirs,
Thank you for the review article, it was very informative. However I am unclear on a couple things though.

You stated that "As of now, none of the HD DVD or Blu-ray movies being produced contain the ICT or Image Constraint Token". So your test disk did not have ICT? And if so, despite the disk not having ICT, the dvd player would not allow digital playback on the Dell 2001FP because the video card had HDCP and the monitor did not?

If there is no ICT, is the disk still protected, and is HDCP necessary?

I apologize if this has been answered or touched upon before, and thank you and anyone for clarification.
 
Wow, thank you 100x for this article! I must say, I'm very happy with the way things are shaping up, and my equipment is compliant. :D My new HTPC is going to have a 7950GT in it, and both an HD-DVD and Blu-Ray optical drive. Both solutions in one HTPC.

(Now all we need is HD-DVD Decrypter...)
 
PureVideo is a Directshow MPEG-2 codec. It is a normal codec, but when it detects compatible video cards it uses the GPU to process video instead of the CPU. It will it work on ATI cards, but will not use the GPU to decode and touch up the video.
 
This review just makes me want AACS to be cracked even more. If I'm going to shell out $25 for an HD-DVD movie, I want it to play on my notebook (internal digital LCD), my TV (VGA), and my Dell 2005fpw. I shouldn't have to buy a new monitor or run my 2005fpw in analog mode to watch a movie that I purchased legally.

I frankly just don't get what the studios are thinking. They believe that AACS will stop pirates - it won't. AACS is only going to annoy people who actually pay for their movies. AACS will be cracked, and when it is, HD movies are going to be distributed on the internet - and the pirated movies won't care whether or not you have HDCP on your monitor.
 
First impressions (with regular DVD Mpeg2 overlay)

Wow, neat trick... In a dual monitor config, you can now run one monitor as fullscreen video decoding at native resolution, and have the other running in a windowed mode. Great for presentations, where you want the audience only seeing one screen, but you can see what they are watching *and* work with other things...

PowerDVD version 5 works seamlessly with the switching monitor ability.

The overlay defaults to 57% saturation, which is a little too strong IMO, a setting of 53% is more to my tastes (mind you I do have a better monitor that does not need high saturation settings) Its also a little too reddish. BTW: the real-time overlay display is not working properly on my system.



OT: The 2D quality is also ever so slightly better than the last official set of drivers.
 
when do we get to see avivo vs purevideo hd in playback quality, ease of use, compatability etc etc?
 
If the cpu is being used at 90%+ and then starts a task on another thread, should it not start to use it's other core?
Does the decode software use both cores or is it down to windows to distribute the process?
Is hard-drive caching or other subsystem use more likely to be the cause of stuttering without graphics card assistance?
:confused:
 
ma701apm said:
If the cpu is being used at 90%+ and then starts a task on another thread, should it not start to use it's other core?
Does the decode software use both cores or is it down to windows to distribute the process?
Is hard-drive caching or other subsystem use more likely to be the cause of stuttering without graphics card assistance?
:confused:
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No, the GPU is doing the decoding. A GPU with 24 pipes at 500MHz can decode much, much, much faster than a CPU with 1 pipe at 2GHz. That's the whole point of this: nVidia is saying that today's CPUs are still not fast enough to decode HD-DVDs real time, so that's where the GPU comes in.

bsoft said:
I frankly just don't get what the studios are thinking. They believe that AACS will stop pirates - it won't. AACS is only going to annoy people who actually pay for their movies. AACS will be cracked, and when it is, HD movies are going to be distributed on the internet - and the pirated movies won't care whether or not you have HDCP on your monitor.
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You know what, I was thinking, AACS could be even easier for the pirates to break than CSS was. All they have to do is rip the DVD, and change the ICT to "always play at full resolution." Crack finished. I don't know what the studios were thinking with this system.
 
mashie said:
And you believe that the ICT setting isn't behind the 128bit encryption when everything else on the disk is? ;)

The reason CSS was broken was simply because the Xing media player didn't encrypt the key inside the application. The best bet is the return of sloppy developers, but not likely after the CSS mess though.
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Awww come on now, you have to give the Russians a little more credit than that. Really, those guys and the Swedes can crack darn near anything.
 
Let me get this straight.

I have a 7950 GX2 (doesn't support HDCP), a 19" CRT Iiyama Monitor (Doesn't support HDCP) which can support upto 2048 1536 @ 75Hz and uses analogue connection with a DVI to analogue dongle since the video card only has DVI out.

If I get a HD DVD player, HD supported drivers and a software HD movie player, I will be able to play movies at full quality through the analogue connection depsite I dont have ANY HD DVD rated equipment? But only until 2010?
 
Frosteh said:
Let me get this straight.

I have a 7950 GX2 (doesn't support HDCP), a 19" CRT Iiyama Monitor (Doesn't support HDCP) which can support upto 2048 1536 @ 75Hz and uses analogue connection with a DVI to analogue dongle since the video card only has DVI out.

If I get a HD DVD player, HD supported drivers and a software HD movie player, I will be able to play movies at full quality through the analogue connection depsite I dont have ANY HD DVD rated equipment? But only until 2010?
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Your 7950 GX2 doesn't support HDCP ? I thought all retail 7950 GX2 supported it...

@Kyle

Great article. I never really did follow all these details up until now and this article made things clear. Keep up the excellent work!
 
Silus said:
Your 7950 GX2 doesn't support HDCP ? I thought all retail 7950 GX2 supported it...
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I was under the Impression it doesn't, i've not seen it listed as supporting it under any of the lists floating around, unless im just going blind...

*edit*

Oh I see the Hardocp article lists it as capable, oh well, doesn't really matter I still don't have a HDCP monitor, but it's high enough resolution to cope with a full scale analogue HD signal so, still ok.
 
alcuin said:
Hello sirs,
So your test disk did not have ICT? And if so, despite the disk not having ICT, the dvd player would not allow digital playback on the Dell 2001FP because the video card had HDCP and the monitor did not?

If there is no ICT, is the disk still protected, and is HDCP necessary?
Click to expand...
The issue is digital output. With the ICT on a disc set to off, it lets you use analog outputs at full resolution. Eventually the ICT may be set to on, requiring an HDCP digital link, or Allow at 480p resolution (or 720p or whatever) through analog outputs.
bsoft said:
This review just makes me want AACS to be cracked even more. If I'm going to shell out $25 for an HD-DVD movie, I want it to play on my notebook (internal digital LCD), my TV (VGA), and my Dell 2005fpw. I shouldn't have to buy a new monitor or run my 2005fpw in analog mode to watch a movie that I purchased legally.
Click to expand...
It's the new way, man, it's just going to take some getting used to - like the idea of paying for computer software, and either buying CD's, or paying for WMA albums. There's too much money in this stuff for companies not to try to keep their shit from being stolen. The whole freeloading mentality has got to go to keep commerce going.

Besides, you're going to need a new laptop to play high def discs anyway.
 
alcuin said:
Hello sirs,
Thank you for the review article, it was very informative. However I am unclear on a couple things though.

You stated that "As of now, none of the HD DVD or Blu-ray movies being produced contain the ICT or Image Constraint Token". So your test disk did not have ICT? And if so, despite the disk not having ICT, the dvd player would not allow digital playback on the Dell 2001FP because the video card had HDCP and the monitor did not?

If there is no ICT, is the disk still protected, and is HDCP necessary?

I apologize if this has been answered or touched upon before, and thank you and anyone for clarification.
Click to expand...

Yeah, what he said....

:confused:

Edit: Jedi answered above.
 
InorganicMatter said:
No, the GPU is doing the decoding. A GPU with 24 pipes at 500MHz can decode much, much, much faster than a CPU with 1 pipe at 2GHz. That's the whole point of this: nVidia is saying that today's CPUs are still not fast enough to decode HD-DVDs real time, so that's where the GPU comes in.
...
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What hasn't been answered to my satisfaction is the question: "What level of GPU will PureVideo HD need?"

As I understand it, at the moment PureVideo (std. vers.) is mainly implemented in GPU microcode, and so to get all the current PureVideo functionality you need a minimum of a 7600GT.

However, as this Anandtech review details, PureVideo HD is still mostly implemented in CPU microcode. So, when we get to the stage that PureVideo HD is still mostly implemented in GPU code, what level of GPU will PureVideo HD need?

My gut feeling is that we'll be needing more like a 7950GT than a 7600GT ...

Any thoughts?

Adrian
 
I've used two PC based Blu-ray drives and haven't had any problems playing back BD movies on an older AMD 64 system. This was before PureVideo was released as well. Then again, I lack an HDCP compliant monitor, so it was playing at a lower resolution.

I don't know if anyone else has read the release notes for WinDVD BD and WinDVD HD, but HD DVD seems to have considerably higher requirements.

WinDVD BD
Processor Intel Presslor 2.8GHz (lowest)
RAM 256MB
Graphic card nVidia GeForce 6600GT 256MB VRAM (VGA, DVI with HDCP, TV out)

WinDVD HD
Processor Pentium Dual Core 3.2 GHz and above
RAM 1GB and above
Graphic card nVidia 6600 or ATI X1400 and above
 
mashie said:
And you believe that the ICT setting isn't behind the 128bit encryption when everything else on the disk is? ;)

The reason CSS was broken was simply because the Xing media player didn't encrypt the key inside the application. The best bet is the return of sloppy developers, but not likely after the CSS mess though.
Click to expand...

Well, that, and the fact that CSS uses 40-bit keys. Brute forcing it only takes about a day on a modern CPU.

AACS is considerably stronger, but as we have seen with WMDRM, FairPlay, and other systems, DRM can always be cracked. Ask any cryptographer how you can provide a user with data and the means to decrypt it and then prevent them from copying that decrypted data. It's only a matter of time, and apparently "DVD Jon" is already on it.
 
Were you able to test any h.264 content?

From what I've heard most US retail discs have so far not used this codec, as they were afraid that the first gen players (Toshiba and Samsung) would not be guaranteed to play back this codec stutter free. It is much more computationly intensive than MPEG-2 and even VC-1. There are multiple profiles, but the "max" profile (I foget the exact name) would be a great test of the PureVideo HD codec, to see how much it can really offload since they claim it supports VC1 and h.264.
 
UH do we have a working list of monitors with hdcp yet to go along with the video cards? Kinda pointless to only have one list. I wonder if notebooks will be affected by this since its a digital link with no copy prevention installed.
 
I have several questions:

1. What about the "NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder"?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html

I would rather use Windows Media Player with my "NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder - Platinum" for HD-DVD & Blu-Ray content rather than having to purchase a CyberLink, InterVideo or Nero product...

2. Assuming that NVIDIA will support this in the future, when will we see Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD Master Audio support? (obviously we will need sound cards to support this as well)

3a. What version of HDMI are these newer video cards using?

3b. What is NVIDIA's stance on HDMI 1.3?

3c. Will the HDMI on video cards just pass video or audio AND video? And how will the video card connect to the sound card if they do pass audio?

Keep in mind that undecoded Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD Master Audio can ONLY be passed to an external receiver using HDMI 1.3. Basically this tells me that the decoding will need to be done via hardware/software inside the computer.

4. Can we get a list started of all movies in MPEG-4 / H.264, VC-1 & MPEG-2 HD?
 
sethk said:
Were you able to test any h.264 content?

From what I've heard most US retail discs have so far not used this codec, as they were afraid that the first gen players (Toshiba and Samsung) would not be guaranteed to play back this codec stutter free. It is much more computationly intensive than MPEG-2 and even VC-1. There are multiple profiles, but the "max" profile (I foget the exact name) would be a great test of the PureVideo HD codec, to see how much it can really offload since they claim it supports VC1 and h.264.
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I think he tested some US HD-DVD movies encoded with VC-1, and some homemade samples encoded with h.264 at high bitrates (x264?). I doubt you can get a h.264 HD-DVD movie in USA right now, maybe in Japan.
 
Frosteh said:
I was under the Impression it doesn't, i've not seen it listed as supporting it under any of the lists floating around, unless im just going blind...

*edit*

Oh I see the Hardocp article lists it as capable, oh well, doesn't really matter I still don't have a HDCP monitor, but it's high enough resolution to cope with a full scale analogue HD signal so, still ok.
Click to expand...
The box on my XFX 7950 GX2 has a HDCP sticker on it anyway. Given the fiasco a while ago about lying about that, I'd assume it means something at this point.
 
What HD DVD drive was Kyle using???

Also, I have one of the first released Blu Ray drives and it did not require any kind of update in order to play BD Movies. I think the reason people think this is because there isn't any commercially available software (I'm using WinDVD 8 Japanese version) that will allow you to play Blu Ray movies on your Sony BWA-100A drive but Sony is supposedly releasing free software soon that will allow this (obviously not necessary for playback though).

I've got my NEC 1100A drive out of my XA1 but I've not been able to get it to play any HD DVD disc other than the (unprotected?) HD.Net "Get Out 2".

Blu Ray is working great.

The only problem is, I can't test HD DVD without uninstalling WinDVD and then re-installing and choosing HD version during second step.

Kyle, please send me the pre-release version of the HD DVD software you have so I can test it :) :) :)

EDIT: I think he used TSST TS-L802A. Now, where can I get me one of those???
 
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