Image Quality Benchmarks, Continued

This test simply shows video of a stadium captured on film. If there are no visual artifacts, there is no resolution loss.

Scoring: One more time! All of the video cards scored a zero on this test, with no difference being observed with hardware acceleration on or off.

The dismal result is that none of the video cards we tested demonstrated any HD video enhancement capability whatsoever as would be detected by the HQV high-definition video benchmark.

Compared to the excellent image-enhancing results these cards get when playing regular DVDs, this is a bit embarrassing. However, HD video is still in its infancy on the PC, and we have absolutely no doubt that the driver situation will improve in the next year or so.

To be completely frank, 1080p video looks so darn good, I'm not sure it will make a big difference. Recall that DVD video is a mere 720x480 pixels: things like edge enhancement and jaggy reduction are quite noticeable. But when we up the ante to 1080p - that is, 1920x1080 pixels - it's hard to complain about image clarity. It looks really fantastic as it is. I'm sure I've offended legions of video quality enthusiasts, but I'm just calling this one as I see it guys.