Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#31

Post by freedomben » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

verall wrote: post #11

netruk44 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have an Nvidia shield that now sits unused for the simple reason that Google forced ads onto the home screen. It used to be that the Shield was the one bastion away from ads on Android TV, then with one update that somehow manages to reinstall itself despite being completely disconnected from the internet, there are now permanently ads on my Nvidia Shield TV. I honestly don't know why it's such a big deal for…

It is possible to plug your shield into your PC and sideload a new launcher which doesn't have ads, it's not too difficult (tho installing adb is a hassle). I heard on reddit that if Nvidia even hints that this is possible, they violate the license agreements with Google, and then Google is allowed to yank the play store...

Do you know if it has to be plugged in to sideload a launcher? I sideload apps through wireless adb and it was pretty easy to get set up.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#32

Post by freedomben » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #17

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

> Buy AMD cards if you run Linux). Experience shows that in practice they also aren't much better than Nvidia in regards to Linux.

Yeah sadly agree, depending on what you want. If you want OpenCL, you're absolutely right. The AMD PRO driver is even worse than the Nvidia driver as it only supports old kernels and install process is terrible.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#33

Post by mohaine » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #17

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

> Buy AMD cards if you run Linux). Experience shows that in practice they also aren't much better than Nvidia in regards to Linux.

I recently switched back from AMD -> Nvidia and couldn't be happier. Other than some issues with an inadvertent install blocking the kernel module it has been pretty much flawless.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#34

Post by Hellmitioksldf » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #14

I have watched 3kliksphilip and LinusTechTips demo video upscaling AI stuff, and it always looks really really weird and gross. It seems really unnatural, and has the same kind of "nope that's wrong" as if you maxed the saturation on the photo. It feels more like a highschooler touching everything up in photoshop than correctly understanding what the objects in the video should look like. Also, in their recent demo o…

This news is still something to celebrate as it shows the way forward.

The information is in the video files and our brain can't just use it but math can.

I can imagine using/buying a upscale model optimized for an old tv show for example. Or using a model for my prev game streams.

There is temporal information and high res pictures from sets, styles or actors at the time of the recordings. All information which can be used.

If its not yet good enough, it will.

Lets see if this forces a global standard or opensource model plug and play or whatever.

And if you look at the other nvidia research like were the model learns the face and than interpolates all further movements also a really good use case.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#35

Post by freedomben » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #28

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

For the newer GPUs nvidia's open kernel modules have created less hair pulling for me and are much more comparable to amdgpu than the traditional modules. Recently I was reading Nouveau is working on re-clocking support on newer GPUs via GSP support which is just starting to be upstreamed, that'll be even nicer if it materializes.

can the open kernel modules do CUDA? I read somewhere that they couldn't, but that could be out of date now and would be a game changer for me

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#36

Post by freedomben » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

netruk44 wrote: post #9

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

I also have an Nvidia shield that now sits unused for the simple reason that Google forced ads onto the home screen. It used to be that the Shield was the one bastion away from ads on Android TV, then with one update that somehow manages to reinstall itself despite being completely disconnected from the internet, there are now permanently ads on my Nvidia Shield TV. I honestly don't know why it's such a big deal for…

Interesting I haven't seen any ads, although I do use the Dan Pollock hosts file on my router to block a lot of stuff: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#37

Post by krackpot » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #17

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

> Buy AMD cards if you run Linux). Experience shows that in practice they also aren't much better than Nvidia in regards to Linux.

Is this true? I'm in the market for an AMD card just to switch over to linux. I'm on an old 1080.

Most discussions centered around the various linux communities seem to parrot that AMD is the way to go now because of open source drivers etc. I always wonder how much of it is an echo chamber.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#38

Post by sushisource » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #15

netruk44 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have an Nvidia shield that now sits unused for the simple reason that Google forced ads onto the home screen. It used to be that the Shield was the one bastion away from ads on Android TV, then with one update that somehow manages to reinstall itself despite being completely disconnected from the internet, there are now permanently ads on my Nvidia Shield TV. I honestly don't know why it's such a big deal for…

I was the same, really pissed off when they made the change. Luckily, it's android, so you can install a custom launcher. I remember I had to play around with adb a bit, but after that, it's smooth sailing. I use FLauncher[0], but there might be something better out there. [0] https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher

Thank you for this link! I, like a moron, kept looking on the play store for something and only saw garbage. Never thought to sideload.

The nagging in the android launcher has got more and more obnoxious recently. Half the time I open an app it asks if I want to "add it to my discover" with the only options being "yes" or "later". Infuriating.

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#39

Post by adra » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

anononaut wrote: post #29

freedomben wrote: post #8

I've been blown away at the AI upscaling on the Nvidia Shield. On my fairly large 4K TV, the Shield can produce picture quality that looks incredible out of source that isn't all that great. On that note, the Shield has been an unexpectedly great purchase over the years. Long life of support from Nvidia, runs Google TV, works incredibly as a gaming console for Steam Linking into my PC and/or playing compatible Androi…

I have an Nvidia Shield pro and I have to say it's been a significant cause of frustration for me. 1-2 second audio drops on occasion, apps that have glaring bugs (such as freezes or inability to go forward/backwards) that I suspect is due to lack of adoption, adverts on the home screen. I haven't switched off of it, I guess, but I wish I had something better.

No freezing or notable stuttering for me. I switched to wired internet for better consistently higher bandwidth videos as my wifi is super swampy. Some applications like Netflix would normally be able to lower you to a smaller sample rate to compensate for bad conditions, but most applications will just be inferior in studders, skips, etc

Re: Nvidia’s latest GPU drivers can upscale old blurry YouTube videos

#40

Post by kiawe_fire » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #12

Old games like Quake always look pretty janky when upscaled (extreme example of course). The low-poly models seem to become worse the closer you can look at them. I wonder if there’s a level of detail that just fundamentally can be upscaled indefinitely and end up vaguely “looking right”, or if it is just the case that something like Apex Legend was release recently enough that the lift is not so huge.

I think it’s the latter.

Because, as you point out with low poly models, there’s so much that goes into the fidelity of a game beyond just output resolution - there’s polygon count on the models, resolution of the textures applied to those models, shadow and light effect resolution - each operating independently.

When a game like Apex is played at high settings but output at a low resolution, at that point upscaling it isn’t much different than upscaling a standard def DVD of a movie like Frozen or Avatar. You’re not creating detail in things like individual set pieces that didn’t previously exist, you’re filling in the blanks of the entire image blown up at once per frame.