Some high-end DVD players will enhance the detail of blurry parts of video scenes. The option to set the amount of sharpening is very nice if you have it, especially if you're playing a standard definition DVD on a high-resolution monitor - like the one that's on pretty much everyone's PC.
The Detail Enhancement test
Software: 0 points Cyberlink's PowerDVD has no means of detail enhancement without hardware acceleration.
ATI Avivo: 5 points Avivo has a good detail enhancement feature, although it's fairly subtle compared to Purevideo's detail enhancement. The Avivo detail enhancement feature doesn't allow the user to set the level of sharpness, but from our discussions with Ati we got the impression that they hope to add a user-controlled level of detail enhancement in a future catalyst version. Because it's so subtle, we're giving Ati 5 out of 10 in this test, although I believe in a future catalyst version with an increased level user-controlled sharpness they'd get a 10.
Geforce Purevideo: 10 points Purevideo is the only competitor to offer a user-controlled level of detail enhancement. We set it to 100% for our tests and it provided excellent detail enhancement, in our opinion better than the competition. Just remember to turn the option on in the driver panel and set the level to taste, or it won't be enabled.
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Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.
